Agile Attitudes- An Insight and a Challenge

[Ron Morsicato]

Agile Attitudes
Volume 1, Issue 7                                     Sept. 2, 2004
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Nancy V. will be speaking at the Embedded Systems Conference.
See below for details.

Boston SPIN is having Jeff Sutherland as their speaker on Sept. 14,
in Burlington, MA. Jeff is using Scrum to manage something like 8
projects at Patient Keeper, and he has streamlined it so that each
project takes 10 minutes per day of his time, and only 1 minute per
day of each developer's time for creating the status info necessary
to control the project. See http://www.boston-spin.org/ for details.

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                      An Insight and a Challenge

Summer vacationtime's over and we've returned from our unannounced
hiatus. We have much to report from our participation in the two
agile software conferences - the June Agile Development Conference
and the more recent XP Agile Universe conference. In our last news-
letter in July, Nancy summarized the highlights of ADC. Since then,
I'm happy to report that her own ADC paper has stirred some buzz,
but I'm sure she is too modest to admit it. You can check it out on
our web site.

Speaking of buzz, the theme at last month's XPAU was set by Mary
Poppendieck's Keynote. In it she explained how new technologies
come into the mainstream only after early development by
"enthusiasts," and continued support by "visionaries." The next
group to adopt the technology is termed the "pragmatists."
Pragmatists are those who have a need to accomplish a difficult
result, and have become discouraged by capabilities of the current
mainstream technology. They are numerous enough so that their
adoption of the technology is the entry point into the mainstream.
However, unlike the enthusiasts, who develop the technology by
dedication to an ideal and daring to try out a new idea or a new
combination of existing methods, and visionaries, who propagate the
ideals because of a firmness of belief in a better way, pragmatists
have a "show me" attitude. They will adopt the technology only if
they're convinced that there is significant evidence that the
technology delivers as promised. Thus there is a chasm of uncertainty
that the new technology must cross before it can be considered
acceptable in the mainstream of the applicable industry.

Mary was speaking, of course, of Agile software development as the
technology. When I arrived at the conference, I was suspicious that
there would be a lot of "preaching to the choir." When I left I was
uplifted by the realization that the Agile community can seize the
opportunity to convince those pragmatists that Agile practices are
the way to go. This opportunity was spurred by Robert "Uncle Bob"
Martin's challenge to the attendees to take a critical eye to all
the purported "successes" of agile projects. Instead of looking at
them as technical successes from the worker bees' or tech leads'
viewpoint, their evaluation must be from a business perspective.
It is only then that the pragmatists of our industry will feel
confident in adopting Agile software development practices.


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                         Public Appearances

Nancy Van Schooenderwoert will present on "Embedded Extreme Programming
     Experience Report and Clinic" at the Embedded Systems Conference 
     in Boston, September 13 - 16, 2004. Her presentation is on Sept 14,.
     Earlier that day. James Grenning of Object Mentor is also giving a
     talk entitled "Extreme Programming and Embedded Software Development"
     See http://www.esconline.com/boston/

     Note that that's also the date that Jeff Sutherland will be
     speaking. Somehow, we intend to make all three!

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