Tool-Free Agile

  Agile   ProjectsAtWork  

When adopting agile principles for projects, try to avoid the lure of automated software, which often defeats or dilutes real change in the interactions and thinking of team members by reinforcing a command-and-control culture.

This is the fourth and final installment in a series of excerpts from Practices for Scaling Lean & Agile Development: Large, Multisite, and Offshore Product Development with Large-Scale Scrum (Addison-Wesley Professional, January 2010; ISBN 0321636406, Copyright 2010 by Pearson Education] For more information: www.informit.com/title/0321636406.

"We're starting to do agile. What tool should we buy for agile project management?" This is a question we hear often; our suggestion is always the same — and we mean this even for the very large-scale cases: "Avoid any special agile tools until several years after starting the adoption. Keep it simple. Use the wall or, in the most complex solution, a simple spreadsheet and wiki."

Why?

Problems from system weakness cannot be solved with processes or tools. Worse, attempting to quick fix systemic problems with tools creates an illusion of control or change but no real improvement... Executive: "What is the agile transformation progress?" Agile-change manager: "We have installed Agile Tool X and three of the projects …

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