Agile Perspectives

I recently attended an Agile Seminar sponsored by RallyDev (a great tool so far as I can tell). Anyways I found it very very informative.

Ordinarily I am never one to drink the proverbial "Kool Aid" but I found their approach to implementing the Agile Methodology as very rational and sound. Yes there was an air of Yoga to it but it was light.

I found the discussions with Israel Gat to be particularly ... profound would be too strong a world but insightful is a much better ring to it. His blog captures alot of what I discussed with him in our break out.

Either way what I took away from the event was that not everyone that does Agile is a "Bible Thumping Zealot" and that the methodology is sound to the point major corporations have leveraged the principles presented in the Agile Manifesto to great success. So for any of those who watch the Dog Whisperer it was an opportunity to see the possibility that it could work, it can be done, and that is very empowering and also encouraging.

It also reminded sadly how far away my current organization is from truly being Agile or even following the precepts of Agile to realize any of the economies of scale that the panelists are extolling and challenging us to meet.

But if everything is an iteration then we are a few more iterations away from having a shiny agile implementation. Here's to the next release.

-Optimal Optimus