Pragmatic Agilist

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...

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...