The New New Agile Manifesto

We value

Things that are new and shiny over things that are proven and effective

Slogans and promises over working software

Methodologies and practices over individuals and innovation

Certifications over common sense and aptitude

Group think over critical thought

We Commit

To choosing whichever methodology makes the most grandiose promises

To continue to create new unproven methodologies to keep the certification mills humming

To reject metrics as a measure of success and to continue to create new unproven methodologies so there will be always something new that metrics can’t be applied to

To tithe 10% of our earnings annually to certifications mills, lest our certs be revoked

Scrum founder’s belief in pseudoscience and why it matters to Agile

Renee Troughton has written an excellent piece demonstrating that for almost 10 years, Scrum founder Jeff Sutherland has been selling consultations relating to widely debunked pseudomedicine theories.

http://agileforest.com/2012/01/23/frequency-foundation-and-agile/

Reading the primary documents (the Photo Analysis.pdf) is enlightening.  It is such junk science any high school science maven could debunk most of it in a few minutes.

But what does it have to do with Agile?

Well, here is what I see the similarities being:

The State of Agile 2012

Happy New Year to all my blog fans! Where are we at as we enter 2012? Here’s my take:

The Good

• More and more organizations are taking an overall holistic look at project management and not merely following the latest new buzzword
• Agile “mashups”, aka “Pragmatic Agile” and “Post Agilism”, and Hybrid Approaches are becoming more mainstream versus dogmatic one dimensional adoptions
• More people are openly critical of various aspects of the Agile marketplace, from practices, to profiteering. In the past many people were too intimidated to question the sacred methodologies. The gloves are off, and have been for many months in the agile debates at this point, and frank criticism is replacing fawning gushing as the norm in the blogosphere
• Scrum and XP, and to some extent Kanban have jumped the shark. XP is nearly nonexistant in the landscape, and Scrum adoption has nowhere to go but down at this point
• Fracturing of Agile (see below) will lead to more independent thinking, and less “me too” parroting of simplistic methodologies; more emphasis being paid to fitting the project and methodology, versus a one size fits all approach 

My Fix for the “CreateRiaClientFilesTask task failed unexpectedly. — Attempted to access an unloaded AppDomain” error

I finally found a solution to the “CreateRiaClientFilesTask task failed unexpectedly. — Attempted to access an unloaded AppDomain” problem in Visual Studio which had been affecting me for many weeks on my current project.

Googling it seems many people are struggling with it; it seems like this is a catch all error, not necessarily related to unloaded domains.

What worked for me was to close ALL xaml editor windows in visual studio, and close all browser windows that have silverlight open.

 

Howto: Create and Promote a new (but popular) Agile Methodolology

1) Make sure it has a board. The bigger the better. It doesn’t really matter what information is on the board, as long as the board is there

Lack of Scrum Success stories a Growing Concern?

Scrum is nearly 20 years old and has enjoyed significant popularity in recent years. But that popularity has not manifested itself in terms of visible success.

There have been repeated requests, for success stories, both here on my blog, as well as on Agile Scout.

However, amazingly, no reports of success have been forthcoming as of this writing.

Planet of the eXtreme Programmers, 10th Anniv. Edition

Remember XP? Pair Programming? Onsite customers? Sure, most of that is passe now, but we have new fads that are just as silly (Scrum, etc). So, in a spirit of humor and nostalgia, I am reposting my original story, Planet of the XPers.

Note, this is SUPPOSED to be humorous, and of COURSE, there is absolutely NO ACTUAL RELATION TO ANY REAL PERSON OR ENTITY EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED BY THIS STORY. Trust me

PLANET OF THE EXTREME PROGRAMMERS  – Copyright 2002-2012

A large starship streaks slowly across the sky. It appears to look like a
large conference table. Its’ enormous engines, powered by huge tanks of coffee
as the oxidizer, and prodigous amounts of chocolate donuts as the fuel seem to
fill the sky with their pungent aroma.

On the back can be seen a large bumper sticker that reads: “This baby turns
on a dime”

Dragged in by the powerful tractor beam, (not to mention the smell of Coffee
and Donuts), Ford and Arthur struggle helplessly as they draw closer to the
evil ship.

Is Scrum just a series of Mini Waterfalls?

To many, sprinting through Scrum feels suspiciously like Mini Waterfalls; others state that that is merely a “bad smell” and Scrum is not just a series of mini waterfalls.

Which is correct?

Although the odor may be pungent, to me it seems correct that a Sprint marathon really is just a series of mini waterfalls, at least at the important levels.

Are you an independent thinker or just an Agile Parrot?

There are two kinds of blog posters out there: 1) Independent thinkers who have their own opinion or conclusions about things, and write about them 2) Parrots who regurgitate what others have written with little to no original content.

When I read agile blogs, 99% of the postings are category 2.

Joe Schmoe blogs about what the daily scrum is, how it takes 15 minutes, blah blah blah. Can’t people just read the scrum guide? It’s not necessary to have 10,000 parrots pasting the scrum guide into wordpress.

It to me is pathetic that so many people just regurgitate the 15 principles, or whatever, and what is it, search engine bait so they can shill themselves as Scrum Masters 2 weeks from now?

If you have nothing to say, other than parroting what others say, then you aren’t an independent thinker. You are a yes (wo)man. Maybe you can claim to be an agile yes (wo)man, but you’re just going with the status quo, mixing parrotism and fad-ism in one banal posting.

Scrum Success Stories

Scrum has been popular of late and it seems that there should be plenty of success stories to go around.

Additionally, Scrum is supposed to result in the release of product to the market rapidly, that “delights” customers and users.

So, do we have examples of such product that we are being delighted by, and has been rapidly delivered?

I’m looking to catalog evidence of Scrum being used to deliver product that is used in the broad marketplace; whether it’s iPhone, android, zynga or anything else that is mostly relevant (eg, not niche).

If you know of a Scrum success (or failure) feel free to post it.

Reports must at least show: The name of the product and company, how they used Scrum (with what if any modifications), and it’s relevance to software development.

To be fair and balanced, failure reports are also welcome with the same criterion.

Jordan