Agile Otter Blog

In the last installment , we talked about reasons that velocity goes up without any more accomplishment by the team. This is a disturbing occurrence to many managers who want to use velocity as a measure of productivity, and their insistence on treating low velocity as a productivity measure. We'll pick up the conversation from there. A: I don't  like  the "estimating in larger numbers" explanation. What is an alternative explanation? B: Perhaps they've developed skills, knowledge, and/or techniques that make it easier to get more work done. There are a few ways of measuring efficiency. One of the least useful is output over time. If one team of people produce more in a week than another, isn't the one more efficient? It's not possible to say. They may put out a disproportionate amount of effort in order to get a higher yield. That could be arguably more productive  but it is not more efficient . If it's harder to get more work done, then yo...

For all the 'take back agile" and "agile smagile" and "apologizing for agile" and all the other post-agilists and so-called post-agilists in the world, I give you Otter's law: Any methodology followed via obligation and knowledge-avoidance cannot produce positive change.  I've ranted about change gone wrong and methodologies followed badly and horrible oversales and undersales and all, but it comes down to otter's law ultimately. Too many companies have huge gains from using XP and Scrum and what-have-you. Too many others tried "the same thing" with entirely different results. Some teams are whole-heartedly into the whole agile thing, and they seem to have pretty good. Others don't seem very excited and don't get much out of it. Is it excitement that they need? I don't think so. I think that the lack of excitement and the lack of progress have the same root. I think it's a lack of profluence in agile-a...