Smith & Sidky’s Becoming Agile in an Imperfect World opens with a description of the Quecreek mine rescue as a metaphor for Agile software development. They identify elements of the rescue team’s efforts that are shared with Agile development. Those elements include the presence of time constraints to the work Read more…
In my ongoing quest to identify the origins of the idea of self-organizing teams, and even a concrete definition of the term, I turn to a chain of blog posts leading back to prior work applying the concepts of complex adaptive systems to business management. A 2018 blog post by Read more…
Many Agilist writers and methodology creators make strong assumptions about organizational culture for Agile approaches to be successful. I’ve described some examples of these assumptions in The Lake Wobegon Assumption and Scrum applicability by project characteristics and reference Becoming Agile by Greg Smith & Ahmed Sidkey as a prime example. Read more…
It seems anecdotally accepted in many places in the literature that among software development methodology choices, Agile is better than “waterfall.” Agile enthusiasts often describe waterfall as rigid, wasteful, demoralizing, and old-fashioned. Rarely, if ever, do these writers provide supporting data for these reported qualities but rather, simply assume that Read more…
Years ago, a colleague taught a product management course through our local university extension program. A feature of the course was that they convened a panel of product and project managers as an ask-us-anything resource for their students. One of my favorite episodes serving on that panel was when one Read more…
A 2020 blog post titled Why Are There So Many Misconceptions Around Agile? by Agile Manifesto signatory Andy Hunt said, “The agile manifesto establishes abstract principles for skilled practitioners in a healthy environment.” Deconstructing his statement suggests that the principles are not intended to be specific rules, they’re only to Read more…
I have often wondered if Scrum can be characterized as a local search technique, specifically hill-climbing, and therefore can be understood from a theoretical perspective by comparison. In computer science, local search is a heuristic method for solving computationally hard optimization problems. Local search can be used on problems that Read more…
Criticisms of Agile methodology abound and are perhaps nearly as numerous as its praises. I’ve taken issues with a number of its elements in prior posts. Perhaps most surprising is that the original signers of the Agile Manifesto have also seen issues with the practice, especially in how it has Read more…
In the Seattle job market, there are at least 3 different interpretations of the Program Manager title. Two are common in IT and software products companies, although one of those appears outside those industries as well, and the third appears mostly in connection with health and human services, marketing and Read more…
I have previously considered change management and its general application to software projects. Following the principles of pragmatic project management set forth at the beginning of this blog, I have found that the use of change management can be adapted and applies in a wide variety of situations. I have Read more…