Comments for Jason Little's Agile Blog

Comment on The Only Agile Maturity Model You Need by Jason

Jason — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 17:55:19 +0000

The danger I see in that type of a model can be the questions about what does a “1″ mean compared to a “2″? How are the rankings given out? How does an org move from a 1 to a 2 etc. I would foresee it being difficult to put data behind those numbers to support them.

Models like the Shore graph or Nokia Scrum test can be useful as they use change in behaviour to explain their rankings.

I agree that regardless of any model they need to be taken with a grain of salt and used for the ‘thumb in the air’ analysis. As always, a mis-used metric is a mis-used metric

Comment on The Only Agile Maturity Model You Need by Jeff Anderson

Jeff Anderson — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 23:47:01 +0000

Jason,

I’m not a big fan of maturity models, but I do use a modified version to try to measure how well a practice has spread across an org.

A 1 might mean only a couple of teams are experimenting, while a 5 might mean this is really entrenched in the culture.

I don’t take the levels to seriously, it’s just a way to vizualize where the org might be.

Comment on What Makes a Successful Agile Coach? by Jason

Jason — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 16:21:11 +0000

I like that diagram Geert, great visual representation of a typical life-cycle of a coaching engagement. Finding that line of when to take control and when not to is always difficult, especially depending on the type of organizational culture that is present.

Comment on What Makes a Successful Agile Coach? by Geert Bossuyt

Geert Bossuyt — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 15:56:37 +0000

Nice thinking, I made a picture last week that reflects a bit your ideas too.
http://blog.xebia.com/2010/04/12/the-coaching-curve/

I would explicitly add another point : “Focus” or something like that. A coach should guide the team, but offer them a clear Focus. AND learn them to set a clear focus themselves.
This is already in your blogpost when I read between the lines, but I think this is that important that it could be mentioned explicitly.

Comment on Turns out being Agile IS all About Culture by Jason

Jason — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 14:08:22 +0000

Thanks for the comment Mark, I read the synopsis on Amazon, looks like an interesting book, I’m planning on ordering it. Thanks!

Comment on Turns out being Agile IS all About Culture by Mark Kennaley

Mark Kennaley — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 15:21:10 +0000

Hello Jason,

I ran across your article. Great post. I agree that culture is the key issue. You might want to check out my new book “SDLC 3.0: Beyond a Tacit Understanding of Agile”, which dispels the myths of “this vs. that” as you point out in your post.

Mark Kennaley
Fourth Medium Consulting Inc.

Comment on Simple Exercise to Demonstrate Value of Collaboration by Carsten Feilberg

Carsten Feilberg — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 10:07:48 +0000

Hi Jason,

I appreciate you for sharing this.

It’s a great exercise. I am devoted to short-run, effective experimental exercises and obviously I am going to steal this one

I especially like that it can be run just about anytime, with no preps. Makes me want to look at my own designed exercises to see why I make them so complicated.

Cheers,
/Carsten

Comment on Waterfalling your Iterations: Not the way to handle re-work by Mishkin Berteig

Mishkin Berteig — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 19:02:12 +0000

Hi Jason, Just thought I would share a little elaboration on your statement that re-work is unavoidable (which I agree with fully!)

Re-work is a consequence of change: changing environment, changing understanding, and changing foundations. Re-work accumulates as a result of these changes. The only questions is when and how we handle re-work. Typically, in the old model, re-work is handled by batching it up as long as possible (until everyone is groaning under the strain of accommodating change). This is often seen in large IT projects when the organization changes technologies (e.g. Mainframe to Client-Server to … to …).

Agile pushes teams and organizations to handle re-work in much smaller pieces. This is hard at first! However, by doing it frequently, it makes people good at it… which means that quality and speed improve.

Comment on The Agile Coach Manifesto by Jason

Jason — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 13:59:47 +0000

Yes, I agree it applies to all coaches except if you’re internal you probably won’t want to work yourself out of a job!

Comment on The Agile Coach Manifesto by Doc

Doc — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 23:04:35 +0000

Interesting to me that you present this from the perspective of a consultant-coach, but I think it applies equally well to internal coaches. Regardless, this is some good thought and well worth taking to heart. Thanks!