Agile in a Flash Card No1

Why Agile? - The Idea

from Agile in a Flash (by Jim Langr and Tim Ottinger) 

"Get us on the same page

Imagine the enmity disappearing as business and development team up to deliver ongoing value to customers!

Get product out the door

Quarterly releases? That's for sisses! With iterative development, you can deliver every few weeks or even every few days.

Drive down risk

Short release cycles allow you to get real, end-user feedback long before you have invested too much in a risky feature.

Learn, adapt, deliver!

Feedback from real users keeps you in tune with the changing marketplace. Internally, you can continually improve your team with retrospection (if you are willing to truly examine your processes).

Take pride in your craft

Using agile technical practices such as test-driven-development, refactoring, and automated tests, you can be proud of the low-defect product you send out the door.

True transparency

You cannot miss the charts on the walls and the ongoing conversations in an agile team room. It is obvious that team members have and share more information than in non-agile projects (when communication is open).

The joy of building

In agile, everyone can experience the excitement of working in a true team that delivers cool, working stuff all of the time. "

The nice thing about agile is the adaptability of the process to changes in the environment. This process however requires that teams are communicating with each other and the other stakeholders of the projects. They also must be willing to truly examine processes whether good or ill to reevaluate SWOT as they progress through projects. By continually examining via retrospection, teams can build on successes and avoid letting obstacles become complete derailing project stoppers. Even people who think they run agile shops have to put aside egos, reduce finger-pointing, and really examine how they are conducting processes because success is not about egos. Successful projects are about meeting deadlines, budgets and estimations. Successful projects are about getting the most productivity from your team to achieve the group's objectives in the projects.