Agile patterns and Anti-patterns

A few weeks ago, I have assisted an Agile seminar at Valtech.

Indeed, it seems there is a wind of change in the business in France. Some compagnies, such Valtech, a consulting and training firm, have decided to focus on Agile Methodology. A good news?

Yes. It could be... I'm just a bit suspicious about the way it is propagated. Agile might become a magic word that will have no real mean for most of people. Nevertheless, as long as there will be agile defenders, I won't be afraid for the future.

Go back to the seminar. there was a presentation about Agile pattern and Anti-pattern from stories of Agile projects. This part was really interesting; others presentation were not unpleasant, but they do not catch my attention so much. Well, the main aim of the Agile pattern and Anti-pattern presentation was to present several case studies, and for each, identify agile patterns and anti-patterns. Fundamentaly, patterns identified were not suprising. There come from common sense. But, I really like these kinds of approaches that open our internal opened doors. It focuses our attention in a way that we would'nt have done. That's clearly one of my favorites game, sometimes, it doesn't work, sometimes it does. When it works, it's a Disney effect: a kind of magic. That's what happened with me this day.

Just to give you a taste of it, some agile patterns: read books by Kent Bek, Martin Fowler, learn through an XP game, use small teams and expert coaching, start with pilots projects with high business value, adapt of agile to your business, gain support from sponsors, make unit and functional tests, deliver incrementally, follow consistent process, make daily standup, work in an iteration backlog, de-scoped the release; some anti-patterns: senior management who dit not understand why there were spending good money to play games, no product owner, no longer the ability to predict project end dates, Quality Assurance department joins team late, team works weekends.

That's impressive. You can start by applying these patterns and not following the anti-patterns, and you have an idea about what is agility. It helps you to de-waste your organization. We may have an hight productive discussion about these patterns. I trust you to do it in your team, it will provide you the most benefits. Anyway, if you want to start a discussion about it, I will be very happy to join.

I just wish to focus your reading on one point: the importance of having slack. I slacked my work to assist to this seminar, and it helps me to have insight about the way I define agility. It changes my point of view, it kaizens my future working days.