My theory which is mine. (Thank you Monty Python.)
It's only a theory and I haven't developed a test for it yet. Though I'd like some suggestions on how to do so.
My theory is: iterative development + daily stand-up meetings + frequent retrospectives +a culture that supports learning = eventual invention of a home-grown fully Agile approach.
The extended version: IF you have a project and a project team in an organizational culture that supports learning, and IF the project team is made up of people of good will, doing their "prime directive best"* on an ongoing basis,...
Once again you have the opportunity to attend the workshop, "Secrets of Agile Teamwork: Beyond Technical Skills" in Portland, Oregon, December 5-7. For more about the workshop and a downloadable registration form, please look in the Events section of this blog. (See that sidebar over there?)
This will be the fourth time Esther and I have presented the workshop as an open-to-the-public event. It's a workshop for anyone who leads Agile teams--anytime. We work from the central premise that highly performing, agile, and/or self-organizing teams thrive on leadership that emerges on demand, which includes informal and formal leadership roles....
Yesterday I had the opportunity to lead a retrospective for the last class session of a new course at Portland State University. Jim Shore and Andrew Black put together a four week, 11 session (7 classes and 4 labs), course on Extreme Programming for twelve enthusiastic students - a few undergraduates, a few graduates students, a few students from local industry. As the last day, they hosted Ward Cunningham in the morning, showed demos of their work over a pizza lunch, and ended the course with a retrospective. Jim and Andrew craftily persuaded several local Agilistas (like Ward, Arlo Belshee...
I want to share this excerpt from an excerpted transcript of a July 13, 2006 audio recording. I downloaded the whole doc from Brian Robertson’s blog, “Enlightened Business” and found this jewel of a story:
“A colleague of mine spoke at a big leadership conference many years back. It was one of these big things where they had ex-presidents, Jack Welch and other big names and leaders. The people attending the conference had an evaluation sheet to determine the speaker with the most impact. The person who won, with by far the most votes, was...
A colleague who works outside the software industry asked me whether retrospectives would be good for his team and whether other Agile practices will work for them too.
Holding regular and frequent retrospectives (as well as a retrospective at the project's end) will help any project team reach its full potential. Even if your project doesn't follow an iterative life cycle, bring the team together for a retrospective at the project milestones (or monthly). Take a short "time out" for team members to recognize and consolidate what they've learned so far, and include those lessons learned in the next increment...