Risky Business

Dave Prior, PMP, CST, MBA is an Agile Consultant for LeadingAgile, where he provides training and coaching organizations who are transitioning to agile.

  Agile  

“Time of Your Life, huh Kid?”
-- Joel Goodson

Agile has lots of skeptics. One of the most frequently raised objections comes from the people who feel it involves no planning and that the lack of direction given will just leave everyone spinning about in chaos because there is no one to tell them what do to. I used to be one of these people. In my early attempts to use agile, I believed that it was just an easy (possibly lazy) way to get out of work. I had no idea how much discipline it actually required.

My first agile experience was not ideal. The company I worked at had the best of intentions: Everyone got a brand new copy of the same agile book, and we all read it cover to cover. With our newly minted head of IT, we gave it our very best shot. Some of us (myself included) struggled with the change. For me, I reacted against what I perceived to be a lack of control within a context that sorely needed it.

Sadly, I was not the only one. While I was walking around like Shleprock warning of impending doom, there were a number of team members who truly embraced the newfound freedom that agility offered--they immediately took on their own version of paired programming. To them, this meant one guy played Quake on the new, massive (for its time) 21-inch monitor while the other guy kicked back and read the latest issue of Thrasher.

What we both needed…

Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.