Make Chaos The Competition

From the keynote speech by Mary Poppendieck, "CrossingTheChasm", at XpAgileUniverseOhFour and XP2004:

So (experiencing the talk vicariously here), Mary means maybe we should write a book or two comparing AgileDevelopment to the industry standard, CodeAndFix, instead of this mythical BigDesignUpFront hobgoblin? --PhlIp

No, I don't think she's talking about books. She mentioned that one of her clients informally surveyed people in his industry. Half of them were using some waterfall derivative, and half were using no process at all. I heard her as suggesting that instead of focusing on the shops with a process or contrasting our methods with theirs, we should go to the chaotic shops and say, "Hey, we've got a way to sort this out." That made a lot of sense to me; my most successful transformations have all been from chaos to XP. -- WilliamPietri

I'm talking about books. They all decry BigDesignUpFront. How many say what about CodeAndFix? --PhlIp

So add to the DeveloperBillOfRights: "You have the responsibility to get FeedBack? from boosting user productivity, early and often."

Two things on this:

First, if all programmers did was to create the things that their customers asked them to do, running and tested, every two weeks, week in and week out, this might not be much of a concern. A team of programmers doing what is wanted might not be quite as creative as it might be, but it would be a useful tool nonetheless.

Second, if you do the things XP suggests, or even the things that Scrum or CrystalClear suggest, you're just about guaranteed to wind up with a team with shared interest, and shared responsibility, in whatever the enterprise really is. It would take insensitive people of seriously ill will not to blesh in a real XP situation. -- RonJeffries

Add this the the CustomerBillOfRights and DeveloperBillOfResponsibilities: "You have the responsibility to do your part, and work with others on the WholeTeam, to ensure the project's success."

that's too fuzzy. attaching responsibility to high-level feedback is distinct and normative.

I attended the same talk at XP2004 [ http://www.xp2004.de/xp2004/talks/PT02Slides.pdf ] My problem with this statement is that often people will not admit that their development is chaotic - plenty of companies call chaos (little or no process) Agile. -- RachelDavies

Since Agile is not a goal, but rather a means to an end, what if we shifted the focus away from being Agile to something like predictable, repeatable, quality delivery? --JbRainsberger

"Predictability leads to Agility." --[PhlIp2004]

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