I spent the morning at the Agile Cafe event put on by Rally Software in Silicon Valley. Check out my twitter stream if you want to see my comments. The agenda included the following:
Panelists share their Agile Implementation strategies
- Atanas Ivanov, VP of Engineering at Playphone, Inc.
- Paul Winsberg, VP, Product Engineering at Global 360
- Geoff Kershner, Director, PMO at LiveOps, Inc.
Keynote Presentation: Things that worked for us after things weren’t working so well
- Aaron Sanders, Agile Coach at Rally Software
Interactive Q&A session with our panelists
Overall, the presentations and Q&A were informative, albeit geared much more toward Dev than Product Management, but I knew that from the speaker list. The sentiment that they all echoed, though, is an important bit to remember. They all had the the same lesson for the audience: The success of Agile for any given team varies wildly based on many factors and you’re not likely to get it right the first time (or the 2nd or the 3rd time).
Ouch.
I’ve been involved with teams that are transitioning to Agile and it can be tricky business to figure out what works and what doesn’t while everything is moving. I know the whole point of Agile is to be able to react and adjust, but to be honest, it was refreshing to hear how difficult it can be to make the switch (and to continue to evolve).
It was also refreshing to hear that Agile wasn’t the right fit for some members of the Dev team, so they figured out some other way for those folks to contribute outside of the Agile process. A smart move, me thinks.
Agile can solve many problems for listing orgs and products, but it also introduces some challenges of its own. It’s nice to hear from folks who acknowledge that, instead of trying to whitewash it.
