Pragmatic Agilist

As agile divas coaches, we are prone to think things like:  "agile is never going to work in a company [like this one] with a horrible, toxic culture. [but I will take the money and give it a shot.  What the hey, it's job security.]."  In fact, "company philosophy or culture" was one of the top two "leading causes of failed Agile efforts" for the 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012 "State of Agile" Surveys administered by the Scrum Alliance.  And I don't think the 2013 results are out yet. One pictures the coaches of the world flouncing around in art deco silk wraps and soft curlers waving our collective hands and wailing things about "not being able to work under these conditions!"  It's poison I tell you, poison! From the excellent http://www.theculturedoctor.com.au/blog But let's turn the question around.  If we, as agile coaches, have a preference to work solely with small groups of (kind) super-geniuses in ...

Did you visit your dentist today?  If not, perhaps it is because in modern dentist offices (at least in the US), a routine dental checkup consists of four key steps: A hygienist grimly and repeatedly stabs your gums with a pointy stick called a periodontal probe (6 stabs per tooth!), and loudly calls out numbers from 1 to 15 with each stab, where anything over 3 means "tooth about to fall out." These numbers, they assure you, go on your permanent record. The same hygienist scrapes some stuff off of the teeth along your gum line, a painful process appropriately known as "scaling." The hygienist gives you a choice of grape, watermelon, or mint toothpaste, and uses that little round tooth cleaning widget to clean the remaining surfaces of your teeth.  They don't say it, but you know and they know that the widget is actually a disguised drill.  The dentist comes in, looks things over, and gives you some summary advice and follow-up requests, like "come ba...

Like so many of you other senior agilists out there, I'm currently playing the latest entry in Nintendo's "Fire Emblem" series, Intelligent Systems' "Fire Emblem Awakening" for the 3DS (henceforth "FEA")  And I'm sure I'm not the first to notice the wonderful insights FEA provides on Agile software development!  But humor me as I spell it out a little bit. Free!  Fire Emblem Awakening wallpaper from Nintendo:  http://fireemblem.nintendo.com/downloads/ You may not have focused on this aspect of the game when you played it, but the essence of FEA is that the power of the team grows exponentially based on skill with which you, the player, build out the pairing between those characters using the game's new duel system in which you fight cooperatively with nearby comrades .  (This would be in addition to the game's "marriage" system, first i ntroduced with the fourth game in the series, Fire Emblem: Seisen no Keifu,...

In 2006, Ivor Jacobson famously summarized , "Most important, agile is about social engineering."  And indeed one of the things that makes so many agilists so dar ned loveable is that we are , as a frie nd of mine put it yesterday, "the kind of people who want to create a work place where you can go and still be a human being."  Not a "resource," not an "FTE," but a human!  It's an inspiring dream! http://www.pbpp.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/human_resources/5364/how_to_apply/494613 B ut you kno w what ?  I t's not a goal you can atta ck directly , even if you are, for some reason, under the impression that you're in charge.  In fact, in my view, a lot of us are completely wrong about what the "lead" and " lag" measures are for a successful "agile" transformation of an orga nization . "Lead" measures, you will recal l, are the little things you can observe which reliably indic...