Technical Advise Week #4 - How Agile?

Some might say that I'm Agile & Lean (yes this is Max talking) while my sister (Mabel) is more traditional. Yet as I mature my stealth framework is starting to take on a more commonly thought of profile. In the systems world many of the sins of traditional methods, and their associated artificats, have been tweeked in order to deliver results. Agile methods take a similiar approach except the number one concern is delivery. These small incremental steps help to build confidence amongst the team and those that have an ownership interest in the final result. Thinning requires surgical precision, and a steady expert approach and this isn't always easy in those method based development companies. Dad was a perfect example that transitioning to a the Agile framework took time. His approach involve him looking at all of the various methods that he had worked with and understood, taking those elements and comparing them against the Agile paradigm, determining what the differences meant, what possible impact they had (whether they were sound and practical), and finally seeing if remedial measures had previously been exercised on those traditional methods in order to reach a similiar Agile conclusion. Once he had fully understood this, he hit his stride of understanding and endorsement of the methods. What is scary to Mabel and myself is that now he is off on a mission to convert some of those traditional aspects to an Agile framework (for example test estimation and overall project analytics). We are confident that he will be again successful in providing a solution set that will benefit the industry as a whole. How could he not succeed, look at who he is working with. Until next week, signing off as always... Max & Mabel, Sr. Technical Advisors.

Making Hard Transitions

No matter whether you are young or old, transitioning is difficult. Moving from comfort zone to unfamiliar surroundings can be gut wrenching, frustrating and brings out personal virtues that may be viewed by some as humiliating. Looking back across my career, and many years of technology change, process introductions, I sometime bawk at things new. It really doesn't matter whether it is well endorsed, supported, promoted and the lips of everyone involved with technology... it still is something that I must absorb. My process involves understanding the roots of the technology, how it is different from what we do today. All the time, I'm thinking about how to transition from one paradigm to another. I found myself this as we moved through and around waterfall, v-model, rational unified processes, rapid application development, joint application design, and now Agile. At last I am there, some might view this as obstance, but others might have characterized this as an age related disorder. The reason why someone young is less apt to take this approach is they have little in their history and techical repository to replace something new with. The good news is that once my process has gone full circle, I am either going to solidly embrace or reject the science. In those cases where rejection has occurred it has been because a flaw(s) have been encountered in the technology. When it's been embraced, it isn't just because it's solid but also because I can help provide an answer to transition clients and friends. Transitioning is an important part of maturity and vital in full understanding of new solutions to lingering problems. I fell in love with Agile technologies in the latter part of 2006, but it took me a much longer time to fully understand the transitioning, the virtues and how to get the big bang from the framework. So although I might be viewed as a late arrival, my depth of understanding and transitioning knowledge now provides me what I need in order to be effective. For this reason, let the late arrival be a solid one, viva Agile!