Comments on: Agile Absolves Developers

By: All About Agile : Jonathan Babcock

All About Agile : Jonathan Babcock — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 02:00:29 +0000

[...] Thanks to Scott Sehlhorst for first bringing Kelly’s blog to my attention. [...]

By: Rune

Rune — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 08:44:41 +0000

“Agile increases responsibility – it doesn’t absolve it”. I see statements like this as very problematic in relation to having others adopt agile. The statement is not sensitive to context, acts as if responsibility is a given when it comes to agile development. It is NOT. It is constant education to have product owner know her responsibility (especially the part about requiring each sprint to deliver working code). It is also constant education to have the team know its responsibility to deliver working code (often developers might try to focus on finalizing “lumps” such as components, instead of walking sceletons, before moving ahead. This is NOT a trivial task, and there will be a great possibility of reaching the state feared in the point “The only people who are talking about doing this project in Agile are developers who think it will allow them to avoid responsibility”, if not this issue is taken as a management issue.

By: Speaking of Agile… :: Fat Penguin

Speaking of Agile… :: Fat Penguin — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 07:59:16 +0000

[...] Tyner Blain blogs: A client at a large company with large development teams and a long history of waterfall development made a comment: “The only people who are talking about doing this project in Agile are developers who think it will allow them to avoid responsibility.” My client may have been right (that people were saying that) but the developers who were saying it were wrong. Agile increases responsibility – it doesn’t absolve it. [...]

By: Scott Sehlhorst

Scott Sehlhorst — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 13:49:17 +0000

Hey Bill, great to hear from you on this one. Happy new year!

Any successful team & process, agile or waterfall, will be staffed with individuals who take personal ownership. You and I have both run waterfall projects that worked (and some that didn’t, at least for me). I would agree that individual accountability is a key component in the success of those projects. The same is true with agile projects – if individual developers are not owners, they won’t do “magically better” with this different methodology.

The distinction ends up being that using an agile methodology adds some accountability at the dev-team level. There are interesting organizational challenges in either case. A waterfall project will fail if there is no one who takes ownership of the requirements. An agile process will fail if the requirement “owners” don’t share responsibility and collaborate with the developers. Some orgs are more comfortable (and more capable) in one model than the other.

By: Bill

Bill — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 03:16:01 +0000

I would contrast it a little differently. I would say that the proponents of waterfall vs. Agile emphasize accountability in different ways. I would say the Agile proponents emphasize accountability by emphasizing team accountability more than individual accountability, and you seem to support that in your 2 bullets where you say, “Agile teams take ownership…” Waterfall proponents emphasize individual accountability more, and they are looking for individuals to take ownership. I’m not suggesting it’s one or the other; it’s where the emphasis lies.

By: Alexei@Nitobi » Blog Archive » Agile a double-edged sword for Developers

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 19:24:19 +0000

[...] Read the full post here. [...]

By: Scott Sehlhorst

Scott Sehlhorst — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 23:08:45 +0000

Oops. This was supposed to go out on Monday. Must have zigged when I should have zagged. Scott