Agile Otter Blog

I was speaking with my friend Bryan who, like myself, does a lot of work with very large organizations. Many of them are great places and have sincere interest in being wonderful places to work with wonderful people. Sometimes, though, they struggle. In considering the nature of their struggles, I realized that I've collected or formed some observations of dynamics and I've not really vetted them all publically. I'd like to take this moment to think out loud and, with kindness and curiosity and empathy, see if we can develop and refine these observations -- or possibly strike them entirely if they seem utterly false. Please join me via comments or emails (tottinge@gmail.com or tottinge@industriallogic.com) to let me know what you think about these observations, what I'm missing, and what I can do to fill out the set better. Just remember, this is about curiosity and systems -- I'm not here to tear anyone down. Dunbar's Number Researcher Dunbar notic...

My friend and colleague Curtis Cooley recently blogged " You Might Have Too Many Developers ." Overall, I agree that smaller teams move more quickly and swarm more effectively on task than large ones seem to, and that there is definite overhead with large groups. You already know some developers are more effective than others.   What if you could find 1000 within the 2000 that collectively are twice as effective as the other 1000? Joel Spolsky has claimed the best programmers can be as much as 10 times more effective than the worst programmers. The argument continues describing how many developers are much better than others, and are better in a smaller group than they can be when they are encumbered by less competent programmers. I also agree that smaller teams of more expert programmers make sense on many levels and represent a savings in frustration, cost, and time.   As Red Adair would say : "If you think it's expensive to hire a professional ...

Note: this was originally all plain text and a little shorter.  As more people have joined the conversation, and other supportive materials have come to mind, it is growing links and a little verbiage but this is only to support the idea: we don't have to settle for expediently cranking out horrible work between pointless meetings. We can do better.  Are we getting tired of the kind of "agile" where you don't really have any particular technical practices, change (and improvement) is entirely optional, and you pretty much do waterfall with additional overhead of meetings? Are we tired of seeing "sprints" and "iterations" used as ways to pressure people into working harder and longer (" pushing velocity "), with no training or learning or even autonomy? Are n-week death marches the ultimate expression of our values? Are we tired of the kind of "agile" that's all about buzzword compliance and rituals and motivationa...