Q7. If you could sum up Agile in 2 sentences ... what would it be? What's the essence of agile to you?
That's a tough question for me to answer. "Agile" itself is such a nebulous term... outside of the manifesto, we don't really have a common definition of "agile." In a way, that's good, because it lets everybody put their own interpretation on the term, and it lets all of these different methods (XP, Scrum, FDD, Crystal, DSDM, and so on) share the same tent.
And, in a way, it's bad... because it lets everybody put their own interpretation on the term. As "agile" gets more popular, I think we're going to see more and more big companies sell "agile" approaches that are just warmed-over versions of what they've always done. The key word to run away from: "enterprise" agile, as in (insert cheesy announcer voice here): "Our pragmatic approach to agile takes into account the real world constraints of today's enterprise! Use our enterprise agile toolset to manage your project plan and assign work to remote workers. With our enterprise web testing tool, create tests in minutes, no programming required!"
Just now, I tried to write two sentences that defined agile, but I couldn't do it. I can recognize an agile approach when I see it, but I don't think I could define it. Really, I think, it's a philosophy... a way of looking at software development. For me, it involves a rigorous yet informal approach. A focus on delivering meaningful results. Respect for the individual, and appreciation for the fact that software development is about getting over-evolved chimps to cooperate with each other.
...you know what? I'm going to punt. In the third part of our book, we try to describe the essence of agile. We encountered the same problem writing that part that I'm having now. So rather than make up our own definition, we collected all of the philosophical statements (values and principles) that we could find in other agile books and we collated them into a giant affinity map. We came up with fifteen principles that all agile methods seem to share. I'll just list those out. It's not two sentences, but it's the closest thing I've got to the essence of agile.
Improve the process: understand your project; tune and adapt; break the rules Rely on people: build effective relationships; let the right people do the right things; build the process for the people Eliminate waste: work in small, reversible steps; fail fast; maximize work not done; pursue throughput Deliver value: exploit your agility; only releasable code has value; deliver business results; deliver frequently Seek technical excellence
Q8: That was a rather serious answer! To counterbalance it can you tell me something odd, unexpected or just plain fascinating? Something your friends know ...
I mentioned earlier that my friends like to get together and play German-style board games. Well, one of those games is Settlers of Catan and we have most of the expansions for it--Seafarers of Catan, Cities and Knights, Das Buch, even the two-player card game.
We don't play it much any more, though, and that's because my wife always wins. Every time. No matter which variant of the game we play or who we're playing with. She won't tell me how she does it, but I think I'm on to her.
It's mind control. Yes, my wife is an alien.
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