Agile India.

This is supposed to be an introductory presentation on Agile.

In this presentation I give some examples of heavy weight methods and their implications on your project. Then I give a quick overview of Agile methods, the rationale behind it, its origin, its values and principles. I move on to describe that what I see happening today in the industry is really waterfall in the name of Agile. I give some reasons why this is happening and then I give some pointers to move away from this flawed thinking.

Bottom line, Agile is not a Silver Bullet and don’t fall pray to marketing gimmicks. Question dogmatic claims. Adapt Agile to your needs and take baby steps.

We are having so many issues. Let’s define a Perfect Process that every single individual will perfectly follow without fail and that will solve all our problems.

How often do you come across folks with this mentality? (I phrase “Silver Bullet” echoes in my ears.) Over the years I’ve met so many people with this mentality that today I just hate the word “Process”.

Recently at the Agile Bangalore User Group meeting, I started the discussion on Naked Agile, by saying,

I want to be Agile but I don’t want any process. Yes, absolutely zero process.

(You might think I made an oxymoron statement. Trust me, I know what I’m saying).

So we started to discuss why we don’t need any process. To understand that better, I asked the participants to tell me what connotations are associated with the word Process. (What comes to your mind when you think about Process). Following is a collated list:

• Predictability and Certainty
• Sense of Mistake Proofing (if we have a process we’ll never make mistakes)
• Zero Slippages - we won’t miss out anything
• Scalability - we can scale something across the organization
• Static (Set in Stone) and Rigid
• Prescriptive
• Consistency - Everyone will work the same way (Welcome to a Software Factory)
• Repeatable -  Can do the same thing over and over again without failures
• Sense of Control
• Clear Roles and Responsibility definition
• Perfect
• One pant fits all
• … and the list goes on

I feel some things in this list are important, while others are plain evil. IMHO, when people focus on a list like this, they get caught up in the means and miss the end goal. I find it easier to focus on the end goal by explicitly stating that I don’t care about process nor do I want a process. I’m all about Embracing Uncertainity and Innovation.