Agile’s Easy
September 14th, 2006[ Software Development ]
Okay so we know there are some sucky parts of agile processes, is there anything good in there? Most of the great parts look surprisingly similar to the bad parts. For starters:
“YOU HAVE TO USE YOUR BRAIN!”
If you work in software, and you’re not a robot, then you want to use your brain. Sure, 8am the day after your 30th birthday you may want to coast but in general most people want work that requires them to be present, contribute and think. How many people do you know who ‘phone it in’ during their day jobs only to spend all their off hours on a project they’re utterly passionate about?
If you’re a business owner, do you want a process that attempts to get every team member thinking about your business goals in every decision they make and every action they take? Or do you want a process that requires a small subset of people to think and then hand off their attempt at documenting those thoughts to a team of glorified line workers?
Am I biased? Of course I’m biased, because I’m not a robot. I’m biased to providing real value to business owners while providing a model to work in that places value on that wrinkled piece of sponge held in people’s brainboxes.
Traditional processes creep in when intelligent, collaborative models are forced to scale too aggressively. It’s difficult to control this model and that scares people. You can have the control back but only by introducing more traditional models that have a proven record of stifling innovation. They come at the sacrifice of that individual intelligence. You really can’t have it both ways.