Category: agile

As of February, 2001 the authors of the Agile Manifesto were all advanced in their careers and were already well known as top-tier software professionals. The individuals are quite different from each other; different experiences, different perspectives, different political views, different levels of formal education, different ways of approaching problems, very different personalities.

Notwithstanding their differences, they have one thing in common, and I think it may have a bearing on the tone of the Manifesto, as well as on a peculiar incongruity that I’ll mention later. The common factor: They are middle-class white males raised in a West European or North American cultural context.

As a young computer programmer, I moved to Dallas, Texas, without ever having been there before, and with no idea what the place was like. There were three attractors for me: (1) Reputedly good prospects for a career in information technology, (2) no State income tax, and (3) good Mexican food. Those of you know know me IRL will be unsurprised by which of those was the strongest attractor for me. Indeed, as I rolled into town the first time, I was delighted to see a Mexican restaurant on nearly every corner.

Some years later, I was working with a guy who had just completed an introductory Six Sigma class and had started the journey toward Green Belt status. In other words, an Expert. As he listened to the almost-daily discussion about which Mexican restaurant we should go to, he had a brilliant idea. He would assess Mexican restaurants by the quality of their refried beans.

Continue reading The Refried Beans of Agile

Once “agile” methods had crossed the chasm, organizations in the Late Adopter and Laggard categories began to try and roll out “agile” across their enterprises, or at least across their IT departments.

To support deep-pocketed enterprises that wanted to scale “agile,” consultancies sprouted up offering “frameworks” that could be dropped into place to achieve agility. They are generally based on Scrum and/or Kanban principles, in a way that often lends itself to fun (provided you aren’t the one paying for them).

As the years passed, large enterprises made multiple attempts to implement agile frameworks. With each attempt, they are growing smarter about what will or will not work at scale. But these lessons are excruciatingly expensive.

Despite the general results, consultancies that specialize in scaling agile methods continue to promote the idea. New books have appeared that explain how to scale agile in large enterprises. I checked Amazon books briefly, and got 14 hits for relatively recent books on the subject. But is it even a “subject?”

It occurs to me the basic reason for most of the difficulty is that “agile” as such simply does not scale. If that’s the case, then how can larger enterprises gain the benefits of agility? I think there is a way. It boils down to applying “agile” tactically rather than strategically; except perhaps to say that the strategy is to apply “agile” tactically.

Continue reading Tactical Agile