Tracking change and innovation in the enterprise software development community
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In this interview made by Floyd Marinescu, co-founder of InfoQ, Linda Rising talks about the book "Fearless Change: Patterns for Introducing New Ideas" and offers examples of how the patterns presented in the book can ease the stress of Agile adoption.
A Scrum team has no designated leader; the team is expected to self-organize. Similarly, one of the world's most renowned orchestras has dispensed entirely with the role of conductor in favor of a process where leadership is shared and decisions are made by the team. Along the way, they have learned lessons and ways of working together that any Scrum team can benefit from.
XP might not be for everyone. An interesting discussion on the Extreme Programming group, tries to find the factors, on which, an individual should be evaluated, to determine, whether he is fit to be on an XP team.
Declan Whelan wrote a thought-provoking blog citing an idea he learned from Mishkin Berteig about an (unspoken) principle behind successful Agile teams: truthfulness. The idea is simple: without individuals being honest and open, most agile practices will not work.
It's an old story. Techies cave in to the business guys because they don't know how to push back. The problem? Developers use numbers primarily for computation, but the business uses numbers to make decisions. In this story the "Spirit of Agile" encourages a developer to turn non-computational problems and issues into number language.
Joseph Pelrine was present when XP took its first steps, was Europe's first Certified Scrum Trainer, and today is still breaking new ground. In this 2007 InfoQ interview, Joseph talked about Network Analysis and how Social Complexity Science informs his work with teams; the usefulness of the Dilbert archetype; & a speed-dating technique to help teams get started (creating software, of course).
Management consultant Johanna Rothman helps her clients manage risk: be it risk in a project's people, risk in how the people are managed, or the risk in the projects themselves. In this interview she talked about strategies for risk reduction, useful for teams in all stages of agility, contained in her new book "Manage It! Your Guide to Modern Pragmatic Project Management."
At NFJS Venkat Subramaniam, author with Andy Hunt of "Practices of an Agile Developer," shared his pragmatic approach to some of the important technical and non-technical factors contributing to project success, including: coding, developer attitude, debugging, mentoring and feedback.
Here is a story about Agile's use in a governmental organisation: at the 2006 APLN Leadership Summit Mark Salamango and John Cunningham looked at the problems and opportunities of introducing Agile in Army environments. True Agile practices cannot be 'commanded' or 'directed’ but frequent delivery offers Agile leaders a "soft" kind of power that is, in fact, very effective.
