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Monday, March 9, 2015

Is agile suitable for all projects

At some point in your agile journey you begin to ask and/or hear this question: "Is agile suitable for all projects?"

Here are some of the responses Ive heard from both those who are still learning about agile and those who have a lot of agile experience:

Agile isnt necessary when you have a known problem and a known solution.
Agile doesnt work in regulated environments.
Agile doesnt work in government.
Agile cant work in a large enterprise.
etc.

In my opinion and experience all of these answers are borne out of legitimate concerns but none of these responses are valid. Let me explain why.

One of the significant differences between traditional projects and agile projects are the short feedback loops. These short feedback loops allow teams to validate assumptions sooner, identify and deal with risks and issues sooner, find and correct defects sooner, and deliver a solution sooner. Agile will be implemented differently based on the project types identified in the responses above, but I believe that all projects will benefit from agiles short feedback loops. To say otherwise assumes that we always get it right the first time - even in the uncommon situation where the solution is 100% known, we get everything right the first time about 0% of the time. Agile helps us discover that sooner so that we can correct our mistakes.

Additionally, any project can benefit from increased trust amongst team members, increased trust between teams and customers, increased trust between teams and management, and increased trust of project status.

In my opinion and experience, the only question you need to ask has nothing to do with the type of project, the type of problem, or the type of solution. Instead, here is the key question:

Does the team want to use agile and have the support to do it?

If the answer is yes, then it can work. If the answer is no, it is not likely to work.

P.S. Here are some examples of agile being used in projects and organizations where "agile wont work":

Agile in a regulated environment.
Abbot Labs experience report - Development of a nucleic acid purification platform and companion real-time analyzer
Agile in a Regulated Environment - Linkedin Group

Agile in government.
Public sector case study - Social Security domain, software to support change in legislation.
Manitoba Parks Reservation Service - Agile case study as told by Terry Bunio.

Agile in a large enterprise
The agile experience at John Deeres Intelligent Solutions Group.- presentation by Chad Holdorf at Much Ado About Agile VI - Vancouver 2011.
Plus an article talking about the John Deere agile experience. "I figure if John Deere can test working software every two weeks on a tractor in a field, then Agile will work anywhere."

Agile with a known solution and a known problem
I recently completed a project with a known solution and a known problem - converting a VB6 application to dotnet "as is". We used agile and the project was very successful.

Agile outside of software
Wikispeed - Joe Justice and his volunteer team designed a 100+ MPG car using agile techniques."We can swap out an engine in the time it takes to change tires".

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Up all night the LinkedIn Intern Hackday Day 2

Update: the official photos, videos, and submitted projects are now available on the Intern Hackday site.

In my previous post, I showed you the sights and sounds from day 1 of the LinkedIn Intern Hackday. This post will do the same for day 2, Saturday July 30. The Intern Hackday was an overnight affair and just about all the interns worked straight through the night to get their hacks done by noon. 45 projects were submitted, featuring a wide range of ideas, platforms and technologies. We saw games, music apps, UI frameworks, augmented reality, AI, location apps, IDE extensions, p2p file sharing, and even a 20 page report.

The pictures below are, as usual, mostly from iPhones. Keep your eyes on the Intern Hackday site for the official event photos, videos and project submissions soon!

12:00am: one of the interns turns 21!

2:30am: Dylan Field gives us a preview of his teams hack