Hey USA! Thanks for Global Recession!

Yes it’s official – we have recession. It doesn’t matter if you work in America, Europe, Australia or Asia. Sooner or later it’s gonna get you. But is it really bad news for us Agile people? I’m more than sure it’s not. Why?
Let’s face the truth – in hard times when companies have to cut costs and work efficiently, Agile seems to be a perfect methodology for them. Ironically not because it just works but because it’s cheap.
Companies will have to learn how to deliver fully working and bugs-free products on time (because bug fixing is expensive). Moreover, customers will start asking about iterative deliveries (to control spendings), better communication, tests reports (test code coverage, acceptance tests, end-to-end…), early integration, etc. Everything to finally know what are they paying for.
So believe or not but sometimes bad news means good news – like less is more.

Does Agile really scale well?

Thanks to my son I’ve discovered something interesting recently. I’ve met one of the best Agile practitioners in the World – Bob the Builder (www.bobthebuilder.com). He and his team are a living (heh) example of a perfect Agile team. They always work in short iterations (max one episode), their planning games are short and effective – each member of the team knows exactly what to do. Moreover, during the stand-ups everyone takes an active part by asking questions and informing the team what they gonna do next. Finally, Bob keeps it simple by doing little design up front and perfectly choosing proper tools needed to finish the task. And believe or not but Bob and his mates finish tasks on time and their clients are always happy. A hero.
But there’s one but. I bet Bob wouldn’t be capable to build Beijing National Stadium (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing_National_Stadium) on time. Why? Obviously because of the scope and capacity. In this case a natural reaction of every manager would be the same – let’s add more people to the team or/and let’s add more teams. Simple. But does it really work like that? Can you easily and quickly add more people to the team without sacryfing quality? My answer is no and if you don’t believe me try to find out how many people have died building that stadium.
If it’s really true and basically it’s not possible to scale Agile well – what is the maximum number of people working on the same Agile project or even in one Agile company? Maybe there are some limits? Something tells me there are – a company can’t grow and grow without adding extra management layers, procedures, gates etc. Is it not guaranteed that finally somebody would ask ‘why don’t we actually use waterfall?’
So what’s that number and when is the time to start looking for a new job?

Do people really like stand-ups?

There was no stand-up today. A mate who usually calls it was off today but it was enough for the team to not join the meeting. Strange huh? They all know the time and the place, they all know the rules. It shouldn’t matter who calls the stand-up but it looks like it does.
So what happened? I don’t really believe they were too busy or just forgot it. Maybe they were waiting for the team leader and his reaction? But what if the team leader was waiting for their reaction as well? Deadlock.
There could be many reasons but it tells me only one thing – people just don’t like stand-ups. Why? This is a really good question and we all know there’s no single answer.
Personally I think people just don’t understand why stand-ups are important. It’s probably related to lack of working experience or also lack of commitment. But maybe they just don’t care what their mates are doing? Maybe they also don’t believe that somebody could actually be interested in knowing what they are doing?
Can you work in an agile team without having stand-ups?

Booyakasha!

This is the first post. Don’t read it – it’s just a test. We start soon. This is gonna be fun!