Ponderings...

An Agile Journey: An Introduction

Posted by Eric Stewart Sun, 01 Jun 2008 19:40:05 GMT

The first time I wrote a program for a computer was nearly 30 years ago. Of course, I was a kid writing simple programs and learning from the code that I typed in from a magazine or a book, but I was still programming. My father and I would sometimes take turns at the keyboard with one of us typing and the other reading out the code or making a suggestion. Little did I know that I would eventually choose a career that not only involved writing code for computers but also leveraging collaborative practices like the pairing that I experienced with my dad.

Fast forward to the present. I’ve been creating software professionally for 12 years. In that short career, I’ve experienced processes from well-defined lifecycles to ad-hoc and chaotic. One of most interesting experiences has been with processes under the category called Agile. In the upcoming series of articles, I will talk about some of my experiences and challenges with various teams attempting to be Agile.

My initial agile experience was with XP (eXtreme Programming) shortly after I read Kent Beck’s first book on the topic. My experience involved some initial attempts to adopt some of its practices, a very productive year with a small XP focused team, and many years (up to the present) using many of these practices in various ways. That XP focused team tried to go “by the book” and was a success though some definite lessons learned.

More recently my journey has led me to Scrum. It started with the all too common tale of a technology group saying they were practicing Scrum by having daily meetings where all team members reported their status. But with strong interest from the Director of Engineering and some of the team members (plus some outside training thrown into the mix), we have become a team that uses Scrum as a framework for improving how we work and deliver. We are now seeing obvious benefits.

It hasn’t been easy. There have been plenty of challenges along the way. Scrum/XP/Agile are just some of the many ways to deliver software but they offer a basis for teamwork and delivery that I enjoy. I hope to follow up with some of the successes and challenges encountered along this journey.