First, a little fun. I found this survey asking just that question, but in a humorous way. Here are the results, which were presented at the Agile 2008 conference in Toronto. I also found (through LinkedIn) a post on Peter DeYoe’s blog with a humorous job posting for a Scrum Master.
Now for a real live case study. In my job hunting, I discovered this article by Damon Pool on Litle & Co. The reason I like this story so much is that not only did the push for Agile come from the top, but they started out that way. They didn’t adopt Agile, they were born with it. That eliminates a lot of problems that come along with trying to adopt Agile later on:
Read on…
Hi, this is Admin here (Dave’s alter ego, and the BOFH that holds all the power. Don’t tell Dave!). I make all the changes to how the website works.
Many of the articles Dave posts have a lot of links to other websites embedded right in the middle of sentences. It’s Dave’s expectation that the reader will follow those links to learn more about what he’s talking about. Recently some comments on the posts on this website lead me to believe that some readers aren’t even aware of the links. I feel that might be because the website’s style is to bold links, but not underline them, as links usually are. Sure, it looks great, but if it isn’t doing the job of identifying that text as a link to somewhere else, then it has to be changed.
At a recent Agile Bazaar meeting, I had a talk with a Web Designer who specializes in accessibility and standards, PJ Gardner, Founder of Gardner Information Design. I’ve known her for a long time, and respect her opinion. She advised me to put back the underlining of links, and I did. It does make certain things on the website look a little less clean, to be sure, but usability is more important to me than beauty, so I’m keeping it that way. Feel free to comment here and let me know whether you like it or not.
By the way, she also recommended I not put all those links in the middle of sentences. I don’t know if I can do that, though, because my style depends so heavily on it, and frankly it allows me to crank out short but meaningful posts without much layout work.
Title: Ken Schwaber on “Flaccid Scrum – A New Pandemic?”
When: Thursday, 06/18/09 06:00 PM – 09:00 PM
Where: MIT Building 26, Room 100, Cambridge, MA – Cambridge
Cost: Free
Scrum has been a very widely adopted Agile process, used for managing such complex work as systems development and development of product releases. When waterfall is no longer in place, however, a lot of long standing habits and dysfunctions have come to light. This is particularly true with Scrum, because transparency is emphasized in Scrum projects.
Some of the dysfunctions include poor quality product and completely inadequate development practices and infrastructure. These arose because the effects of them couldn’t be seen very clearly in a waterfall project. In a Scrum project, the impact of poor quality caused by inadequate practices and tooling are seen in every Sprint.
Title: A Jet Engine On Your Pinto: When HyperSpeed Agile Teams Pull A Slow Organization
When: May 28 06:00 PM – 08:30 PM
Where: Pizzeria Uno – Newton, MA
Cost: Free, though donation toward food cost is welcome
Parking: Garage (entrance off Bacon St.) parking is free with validation from Uno’s
If you piloted an agile team that was successful, you might start a few more. If they were successful, you might then initiate a push to convert the whole company as soon as possible. One company did just that – started forty agile teams, each one delivering impressive results. But it strained the organization so badly that the whole agile program was scrapped. They are not alone – others have experienced this. It’s like installing a jet engine on an ordinary car; the engine will go fast but will tear the car apart. Unless you add the right support structures! We will examine what these structures are for companies on their agile journey.
Agile Bazaar is an ACM chapter and an Agile Alliance affiliate. If you’re into Agile/Scrum/XP, it’s a great organization that has great meeting topics, and they welcome new ideas and topics. Here’s the info page for the event.
In this post, I talked about the upcoming Deep Agile 2009 event. Apparently there was some confusion about the “hardship discount”:
Are you unemployed? About to be? Hardship discounts are available for Deep Agile 2009 for those who wish to learn about modern embedded software development techniques and to network.
“Due to strong sponsorship and great speakers, our Deep Agile event for April 25-26 has passed the “break even” point. As a community based non-profit professional group we can now afford to help more people attend this first of its kind event. In light of the current economic situation, we are offering discounted hardship tickets, priced at $75.00 for those who are unemployed, about to become unemployed, or who have some similarly difficult circumstance. Don’t wait – it’s first-come-first-served and seats are limited. Please contact us via this link and include “hardship request” in the subject field to request a hardship discount. Continental breakfasts, lunches, and Saturday dinner are included in the price. (Note that Saturday dinner seats are limited and will soon be gone.)“
Just to make it perfectly clear, this means that the entire ticket price is $75. It’s not a $75 discount. Woot!
Sorry for posting so much about this event, but I think it’s going to be a good one, and I’m all about helping the unemployed.
I mentioned the upcoming Deep Agile 2009 conference in this post. To explain what it’s all about, Nancy Van Schooenderwoert and James Grenning recorded a podcast. They asked me to host a copy of the .mp3 file, so I placed it at this link. Jack Ganssle also recorded a podcast with Nancy, which can be found here. This event should be a great event for people at all levels of Agile experince.
Deep Agile 2009: Agile for Embedded Systems
Sponsored by Agile Bazaar, New England’s agile community hub
Join us for a two-day deep dive into Agile practices for embedded systems. We’ll get beyond superficial prescriptions and cookbook advice to understand how a methodology that demands extreme flexibility can work in an environment known for its rigidity. Jack Ganssle has the deep experience to pose the kinds of challenging questions all embedded folk want to ask, and James Grenning and Russel Hill have been practicing embedded agile programming long enough to give us answers grounded in experience, that is, *embedded* experience!
Host: Nancy Van Schooenderwoert, founder of Lean-Agile Partners
When: Saturday, April 25th – Sunday, April 26th, 2009
Where: Maxwell-Dworkin Building, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass
Cost: Regular registration: $545 through April 18th, 2009, Just in time: $685 through April 25th, 2009. Group discount, Hardship, Student and Academic staff (see the Deep Agile website). Save a further $50 by entering this discount code when you register: ABZlist_09.
Register at the Deep Agile website.
Read on…