We have been recruiting a Business Analyst for a big project that we have coming up at work. They have all been interested in how our current process works. It has got me thinking why our process is the way that it is and my conclusion is the main reason is that it has been shaped in a true agile fashion to fit the environment that we operate in.
It is easy to get some experts in, go on a course or read how SCRUM should be done and implement it exactly as they have described. I have however found that the most important part of the Agile process is the retrospective and subsequent changes to your process. This self learning and feedback needs to happen not just within the development team but also with the business environment that they operate in.
A lot of processes assume certain resource requirements and business buy-in. However this is rarely the case when you start out. There are a lot of companies that say they do agile but aren’t really agile more like Waterfall using SCRUM. Another major part of Agile is self organisation so someone managing the process too tightly stops this happening. Though at the beginning it is obviously good to start from a template and iterate from that.
It has taken me over 18 months to get both my team and the business in a place that they don’t just get Agile but they are Agile in their approach. Quite a bit of this was born out of making mistakes along the way and the specific learning that we were able to distill from those. We can still improve but that is part of the appeal to me.
Speed of adaptability is essential in the modern business world to stay competitive. It is also immensely rewarding to see a team come together and improve over time. Two weeks ago we released early for the first time in our history. I am sure it won’t be the last.
Music to Write this Code to
R.I.P. Mehdi, nuff said.