Architech Solutions

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October 29, 2010 I've had the pleasure of spending the last three days at an Agile course run by Berteig Consulting . I'd like to seriously recommend Berteig's courses to anyone interested in Agile . Far from the boring, un-engaging presentations that constitute many professional courses, this course was engaging from the moment I sat down on the first day to the end, thanks to Mishkin Berteig , Mark Levison and Jim Heidema (surprise guest) who ran the course, and the interesting participants that attended. While I learned a lot during the three days, the course has really help crystallize my thoughts on why Agile can work. I've seen Agile working well for many of our teams and our customers at Architech, and now I think I understand more than ever why that is. There are many intuitive aspects to Agile that ring true to seasoned technical professionals. It was clear to me that any successful project I'd ever been involved with had already embraced many of the aspects of Agile development already, such as constant communication, focus on quality, and so on. But Agile takes it all a step further. I think now I can see why some of those things work, so here it goes. Why Agile development (specifically Scrum) works (or can work) for everyone (especially those building software products): In fact, change is embraced in an Agile methodology. Change is a fact of life, and pretending that we can see into the future and build to a single unchanging goal has been a fantasy of the IT industry for many years. We've all realized it just doesn't work, and more than ever business and technical environments undergo change (monthly if not more often). Accepting and dealing with this fact is a huge strength of Agile. -Agile supports the creative process. The process of software and technical solutions development, whether you like it or not, is almost as much of a creative process as a scientific one. Creative processes are hard to predict, hard to model, and cannot be shepherded along by fixed predefined steps. Agile allows for the creative process to occur within teams through collaboration and focus on the team and the individual, rather than on process and methodology. -Agile allows every team to be a consulting group. Agile's focus on the team and its ability to deliver end to end value in an application, makes each team somewhat independent in terms of affecting change and delivering value. In this sense, each Agile team is allowed to perform and can be seen as an individual group of consultants. The idea of "˜big IT' is one that is finally starting to fade. As people realize that massive groups of departmentalized people are often no more affective than smaller effective, "˜flat' teams of individuals, there's more need than ever for everyone to play the role of a consultant, being adaptive to the next change and the next project. -Agile exposes hiders. We've all seen these people in "˜big IT' groups, that coast along week to week delivering nothing and often leaving chaos in their wake of their apathy. They manage to hide and shelter in the noise and chaos of the large corporation.

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