The Geek Factor: Why They Aren’t Buying Your Agile And How To Make Them Love It

Gave this presentation at this year’s Agile Vancouver conference.   Thank you everybody who attended – much food for thought and ideas in the discussions afterwards. The slides can be found at http://www.slideshare.net/rreppel/why-theyarentbuyingyouragileandhowtomakethemloveit .

If Agile works, why isn’t everyone doing it? Or, as Agile has become fashionable of late, why all the lip service without the expected amount of real change? This talk makes the argument that it comes down to trust and presents tools and examples for building and keeping trust. The focus is on how to project plan and design applications in a way which, wherever possible, avoids putting stakeholders into situations which require trust in the first place.

In a nutshell:

• Own your stack. If possible, use one co-located team per bounded context and architect systems in a way which allows developers to easily write end-to-end tests and do releases.
• Make sure you and your stakeholders have a shared definition of what success looks like. Are you measuring the same things?  For example:  “Diligence in planning” vs. “Adaptability when responding to new knowledge”:  In light of the former, finding something unplanned-for is failure. For the latter, it’s learning and success is measured by how well the new knowledge is assimilated.