Explaining Agile

This post is syndicated, with courtesy and copyright from Leading Agile.

By Mike Cottmeyer, on January 30th, 2010,

Doing what I do for a living, I find myself often trying to explain agile concepts to folks that are relatively new to agile methodologies. Sometimes this comes up when I am teaching a class, doing a conference talk, or breaking down some idea in a blog post. I thought I'd share my approach with you guys, and a little on how I think about this, and see if you guys have anything to add.

Agile is a Family of Methodologies

Okay... so you are going to 'adopt agile'. What exactly does that mean? Well... if you are going to change how you are delivering software, it helps to start with an understanding of the methodologies and approaches that you have at your disposal. I like to start off talking about these methodologies and how they relate to each other.

Extreme Programming
Scrum
Agile Unified Process
Adaptive Project Management
Feature Driven Development
Dynamic Systems Development Method
Crystal Clear
Lean
Kanban

Methodologies Share a Common Value System

What came first, the chicken or the egg? If you look at the history of Agile, the manifesto didn't come first. We had some folks in the community, folks that were already using lightweight methodologies, that came together to explore what these approaches had in common. After we have an anchor point with the various approaches, I like to talk about the principles and values that unite them. Seems consistent with how we actually evolved as a community.

Agile Manifesto
Declaration of Interdependence
Lean Values

Supporting the Modern Development Organization

Next I like to explore what these methodologies have in common from the standpoint of how we build software in today's modern product development organizations. Each of the methodologies express different aspects of the product development lifecycle. XP is heavier on engineering, Scrum heavier on project management and team dynamics. I like to explain the methodologies in terms of how they address stuff we are already familiar with.

Engineering
Project Management
Business Analysis
Leadership

Practices that are Consistent with Values

Now is a good time to explain the practices that are associated with many of the common agile approaches. Doing these practices doesn't make you agile, but if you understand how they fit into and support the values and attitudes, they certainly do reinforce an agile mindset.

Iteration Planning
Daily Standup
Iteration Review
Retrospective
Pair Programming
Continuous Integration
Test Driven Development
Small Teams
Co-location
Collaboration
Information Radiators

Artifacts that Support Practices

Similar to the practices we just discussed, agile artifacts don't make you agile. These artifacts are proven to support agility and make collaboration and responding to change all that much easier.

Backlogs
Users Stories
Burn-down Charts
Cumulative Flow Diagrams

Agile Roles and Responsibilities

At the end of the day, it is the people in your organization that ultimately determine your success or failure with agile methods. It is important to tell them how adopting an agile methodology is going to impact what they do for a living. When I talk about roles and responsibilities, I often find myself talking about culture and the impact that agile adoption is going to have on yours.

Customer
ScrumMaster
Team
Business Stakeholders
Managers

Scaling Agile

All but the simplest organizations are going to have to deal with the scaling issue at some point in time. Even if you are going from one team to two, or two teams to four... understanding how scaling impacts your business is an important part of the adoption discussion.

Agile organizations are built around cross-functional teams
Structure and culture will trump people, process, and tools every time

Final Thoughts and a Bit on Chapter Two

This isn't an exhaustive list, just the things I seem to come back to the most. It's raining here in Atlanta, so today I am doing some writing. My kids are going to drag me off the couch in a few hours and make me take them to the indoor airsoft arena, so I need to get a few words in while I have the chance. Chapter two is going to explore some of these ideas in more detail, so I expect to share some more on this approach over the next few days. Stay tuned!