From Months to Minutes

I found another presentation on InfoQ, this time by Dan North. In it, he puts many Agile practices through the wringer, and turns them inside out and on their head. Dan questions why we do them, what they do for us, and offers pointers on how to intelligently apply them to become a high performing team.

It's a great and very fast-paced discussion, and it got me thinking a lot about what I do and what I recommend to my teams.

My favorite parts, which are also the most important steps to effectively delivering software, is about the need for one team. In his case, he talks of developers working side by side with traders. He talks about how the developers know as much about trading as the traders do, having learned this by spending time talking with the traders while they work making trades. There is no difference between the business and the engineers. It's one team, consisting of both engineers and traders.

He also talks about minimizing boundaries and hand-offs, particularly within the team. The team does not have members who are analysts, QA's, DBA's, etc. Those roles exist, and are filled by the team members as needed. Particularly, the developers are the ones talking to the traders about features. There is no handoff from customer to analyst to designer to developer. The developers talk directly with the traders, and then implement the features. There is no loss of fidelity; the message does not have a chance to be misunderstood. This is helped by the fact that the traders and developers work together.