allan kelly

I’ve spent some time recently looking more closely at Scrum. One of the things that has come across is that Scrum is quite tightly defined. In particular it is tightly defined around its basic rules and the concept of a self-organizing team. And there are those who would argue that if you move away from some of the Scrum rules, or compromise on the self-organizing team then “you aren’t doing Scrum.”

Personally I don’t care if I’m not doing Scrum, what I care about is whether what I am doing is effective, whether it is improving and whether the customer is being served. That is why I documented Blue-White-Red or BWR for short. BWR is not Scrum, parts of it look like Scrum and it could be seen as a step towards Scrum but it is not Scrum.

As I’ve said before Scrum is where most of the attention is at the moment. A lot of organizations are looking at Agile and saying “Lets try it” and then deciding “Lets try Scrum flavoured Agile.” Therefore, it looks like a lot of teams are trying Scrum.

Using the strict definition of Scrum most of these companies are not doing Scrum. They think they are doing “Scrum”, they may even say they are doing Scrum, and the Scrum alliance may be happy to count then as “doing Scrum” but using the strict definition of Scrum they aren’t.

For example, a friend of mine specialises in Agile in Banks. In the summer he was hired to help a Big UK/International bank adopt Scrum. But, I don’t think the bank are removing their project managers, nor are they embracing self-organizing teams they way Scrum mandates. But if you ask them they will probably say “We are doing Scrum.” My guess is they are doing something closer to BWR.

I have nothing against Scrum, in fact I like it. I believe self-organizaing teams are the best way to organise work. I’m happy for the Scrum alliance to have its definition, I’m happy to help people adopt Scrum. If Scrum “succeeds” then Agile is growing and I’m happy.

But strict-Scrum isn’t a good cultural fit for many organizations. Leave aside which is the better way to manage a team and look at what organizations do. Most organization use some form of command-and-control, they have layers of managers telling people what to do. For such organizations to claim they do Scrum is wrong.

Perhaps one of the reasons why it appears Scrum is the most popular Agile method is simply the number of job adverts for Scrum Masters and Scrum Product Owners. Look this example pulled from JobServe recently:

“Media Project Manager – Scrum Master: … looking for a Project Manager (Scrum Master) to work for one of their leading media/publishing clients in London. … You will have a proven record in the delivery of content focussed online/development projects and have Prince II Practitioner accreditation.”

Firstly, on the strict-Scrum definition there is no Project Manager. So if you have a project manager you aren’t doing Scrum. Conversely, if you are following Scrum then you have self-organizing teams so you are not doing Prince II.

I have no way of knowing whether this organization thinks it is doing Scrum or Prince II but it sounds like they are doing neither. Yet to the casual viewer it looks like someone else is doing Scrum (and Prince II). I suspect this organization is doing some form of Agile and is simply looking to set filters on the CVs that come in. Looking for Scrum Master certification is like looking for Prince II certification, it doesn’t mean much.

I have another piece in this months Agile Journal entitled “The new challenge in Agile adoption”.

When I talk to people about Agile I’m always keen to try and define “what is Agile”. I have two standard answers.

The first is to say “Agile” has come to mean “better” – as in “we cannot get software out the door”, “our software development is a mess” or “our senior management are fed up with us” and something has to change.

These people want to do “better.” Some of these people and companies would have considered ISO-9000, CMM(I), or similar a few years ago, and they may look for answers in technical products: UML, Ruby on Rails, ClearCase or something.

Since Agile is the current buzz, and since Agile has a lower barrier to entry than ISO-9000 or CMM then these groups look at Agile to solve their problems and to make them “better.” Some of these people don’t really know what Agile “is” and really it doesn’t matter.

The second way I define Agile is with two, sometimes three, tests:

1. Agile teams are listening and responding to their customers: they are delivering (software) which adds value to the business and responding to changing needs (whether from an individual user or a large market)

2. Agile teams are learning and improving

Notice I don’t talk about practices, values or routines. If you are learning and improving I don’t care what you do because I believe you will get their eventually. And since their is no reason why any existing Agile method is right for your company you are free to create your own, one that fits with your organization and your culture. Provide that is you meet the first test and serve your customers.

For the record, the third test which doesn’t always apply to my customers but which I need to keep in mind is:

3. When all the consultants, coaches, trainers and other who helped you get Agile leave you do not fall back to your old ways.

The reason for saying this now is to point out that Nobody Owns “Agile”. There is an Agile manifesto, there are Agile values and Agile principles, there are lots of books on Agile but there is no one single definition.

This is a strength and a weakness. It allows opinions to vary and new ideas to appear but it also means that you get different versions of “what is Agile” and they don’t always agree. For example, in the UK I am often at conferences with people like Steve Freeman, Keith Braithwaite, Kevlin Henney and Duncan Pierce, we agree on almost everything. We each emphasis different aspects of Agile, we each have different concerns, we approach engagements differently and we see the future differently. Dig deep enough and you will find differences.

If someone owned “Agile” – like RUP and PRINCE2 are owned – there would be things which would be ruled out. There would be someone who would come up to me and say “What you say about X is wrong.” Agile isn’t like that, its a broad umbrella, you have to decide for yourself who and what is best for you.

Agile is a story, it is a story that changes in the telling. It is post-modern, by which I mean, there are multiple versions which are all, simultaneously “true” – there is no absolute for truth.

There are a few people who I have more serious disagreements with, and I really wish they wouldn’t call themselves “Agile” but that is the price you pay of this freedom.

Look again at my second test: Learning and improving. This applies to your own understanding and definition of Agile too. Our understanding evolve.

This has to be your own understanding, belief and principles. Look at my third test: you can’t rely on others for ever.

And this divergence of views, competition in some instances, and new knowledge should ensure we are all aiming to do better. Back to where we started, and I think if you talk to any of the people I mentioned above they will agree: doing Agile isn’t important, its the end goal that is important and that means being better.

The only thing that remains constant is that second test: serving the customer.

Markets might be a little out of fashion at the moment but nobody is seriously suggesting a return to an Agro-economy or Communism Mark 2. The free market economy – or something that looks a lot like it – is here to stay and that means customers are here to stay.

I’ve been trying to read Requirements Led Projects by Suzzanne and James Robinson for a few months and I think I’m about to give up. I’m about 150 pages into a 300 page book but I’ve been stalled for a while now and my attempts to re-start have not got far. This is a shame because I do like the book, and I don’t want to give it a bad review but if I can’t make it to the end then it has something lacking.

I bought this book because for the last year or so I’ve been very concerned about requirements on development efforts. OK, I’ve been concerned about this for a while but my level of concern has increased in the last year. So, I decided I should look into this subject some more.

Perhaps I read the wrong book. Write at the start to authors suggest their book Mastering the Requirements Process is the one to read if you want to know about writing requirements.

I briefly met Suzanne at SPA a few years ago and was impressed with her knowledge. I have no doubt that the two authors know there stuff and many people will find this book useful. But…

Firstly I haven’t been getting any real insights from this book. Its a problem I’ve found a lot recently, when you’ve been involved with as many development efforts as I have, and when you’ve read widely, it can be hard to find something really new and insightful.

Second, I think the authors have a bit of a mixed up view on who writes requirements. This is partly due to the book subject (projects and requirements) and partly due to the industry. To name the elephant:

Project Managers should not be writing or inventing project requirements.

Project Managers manage projects, they should be concerned with the when and who-else questions on the project. Those attracted to Project Management don’t (usually) have the analytical, inquisitive nature, or the training that makes a good requirements writer. The person who creates the requirements should be a Business Analyst or Product Manager. Project Managers need to be focused on near term deliverables. Requirements creation requires a long term (and possibly strategic) view.

However you wouldn’t know this from many job ads which confuse the roles of deciding what needs delivering with actually delivering it. I guess this book is written for project managers who find themselves in this situation.

On a small project the two roles could be merged provided you can find the right person. And there are a few people can do both roles. But these cases are the exceptions.

This book does set out to discuss requirements led projects so one might expect it to blur the Project Manager / Business Analyst divide but the authors blur the divide without acknowledging it. Sometimes they talk of the project manager gathering requirements and sometimes the BA.

It seems to me the authors are much more familiar with the Business Analyst as requirements writer and not Product Managers. As someone who champions Product Management I found their chapter on “Inventing requirements” to be quite naive. Product Managers are not mentioned and their is no sign that the authors know their techniques. The idea that nobody asked for a mobile phone so it was invented is very simplistic suggestion.

So, if your fairly new to requirements writing this could be the book for you. Unfortunately its not the book for me.

I’m reading some more about Business Analysts at the moment, and I’ve been sent some good links on product management so I’ll return to this subject soon.

I think I get quite a few comments on this blog and I publish most of them. Almost all of the ones I reject are spam/graffiti type, people looking to put a link to their site on my blog. Sometime I reply to a comment but not always, it depends on whats on my mind and how much time I have.

Last week a comment arrived on my Failures in Agile process entry from April 2007. Its worth pointing out that the comment has very little to do with what I wrote in the entry. Except for the fact that both my entry and the poster are concerned with “Agile failure” the content of the post seems to have little connection with what I wrote.

What’s interesting is that this post exists. Its a reminder that many people out there still believe a lot of myths about Agile development. The poster is right about some stuff but then just lists a bunch of myths with no supporting evidence or examples.

So lets take the post and dissect the myths:

• “Considering the reasons for failure you named someone may conclude there is no difference between Agile project failure and RUP project failure. In other words the software development approach obviously does not make difference.“

True: indeed I concluded this myself when I wrote: ”Failure of an Agile project looks a lot like the failure of a Waterfall or RUP project.“

The RUP folks increasingly claim that ”RUP is Agile”. There is long post on that subject but not today. If the RUP folks are right then you would expect RUP to fail like an Agile method because it is an Agile method.

There is a stream of thought that say that method doesn’t make much difference. Check out “Amethodical systems development: the deferred meaning of systems development methods” by Truex, Baskerville, and Travis if you want the full details.

It is widely felt that people, not process or method, are the key ingredient for successful software development. So how do you get good people? I think you need to grow them, develop your own developers. And I think the way you do this is through a learning culture. And I argue that Agile development has its roots in Organizational Learning so is better suited than RUP, SSADM, Waterfall, etc. to do this.

For my full argument: Buy the book, Changing Software Development.

• “The main bottleneck I came across is the failure to define good system requirements. In other words: garbage in – garbage out, principle applies here.”

True: Not sure it is always the main bottleneck but I think can be and it is always significant. This is one of the reasons I’ve devoted a lot of blog entried (and the odd conference presentation) to Product Management.

Although most Agile methods say little about requirements I think they do help. By improving deliver they free up management time and energy to think about that they actually want.

• “Agile wins more attention of management becacuse they discovered the way to shift the responsibility and blame for project failure to programmers…”

Not in my experience. I think managers have always blamed developers and developers have always blamed management.

But blame is not a very useful concept.

• “Downsides of agile:”

To the myths…

• “agile may only be used on small projects”
• “maximum 5 developers on project“

False: this myth started because the early writers on Agile hadn’t applied it to large projects when the wrote the first books.

I’m working with a large .com at the moment to introduce Agile to a large (50+) development team. Jutta Eckstein wrote about large Agile projects four years ago.

Software development always goes better with small teams. Since when did RUP, Waterfall, etc. etc. guarantee success? At the very least Agile is no worse than the next best methodology.

One of my personal mantras is: ”Inside every big project is a small project struggling to get out“. To find this project you need to a) be able to deliver, b) actually deliver business value.

• ”all developers must be higly skilled (no learning moments are allowed)”

First part: Highly skilled developers help any project go better. Agile is no different. (With the possible excpetion of Mongolian Hordes I’m not aware of any development technique that claims to do better with less skilled developers.)

Second part: False, Agile is all about learning, there are lots of learning moments. Again, buy the book, Changing Software Development – I’m not going to repeat myself.

• “developers must be in the same physical room with the project owner.“

False: there is a lot of experience with distributed development teams using Agile.
And once again, any development method goes better when teams are in the same room.

Frankly, distributing your development teams is always going to hinder your efforts. Putting them in one room is the most effective way. However sometimes you just can’t do it. And sometimes companies are prepared to take the productivity hit because the cost savings compensate for it.

This came up in the work I did on Conway’s Law.

• ”project owner must be available 24/7 since good programmers also work extra hours”

False: There is no law that says “good programmers work long hours” so the assumption is wrong. In fact, Agile emphases sustainability, you don’t get that by working people long hours.

Lets be clear: Agile does not mean working long hours. If you are working long hours you have a problem and you should fix that.

There is a problem with Karoshi (death by over work) in some cultures but this can’t be blamed on Agile or Lean. Yes it exists, yes it occurs at Toyota in Japan. No I have not heard of any stories of it occurring in Agile Software Development teams or at Lean enterprises like Dell or Amazon. Or even at Toyota outside Japan.

The original XP project, C3, did cause the near nervous breakdown of the first “Customer” – Business Analyst or Product Manager really which was a failure in C3. However, this does some way to supporting the view (held by myself and the poster) than knowing what you are doing (requirements) is important and thus you need more effort here.

To work someone to death or a breakdown is a problem that needs to be fixed.

• “agile does not support use of virutual teams or outsourcing constructions“

False: Where does this idea come from? I’d love to know so I can understand what to disprove!

OK, lets try…

”virtual teams“ – see above.
”outsourcing“ – ThoughtWorks has built a pretty big business as an Agile outsourcer.

• ”agile provides poor quality of software since documentation usually does not exist. If it does – it is written in “reverse engineering” style.”

False.

I have never seen any evidence that documentation leads to high quality software. Year ago I worked on rail privatisation, we had lots and lots of documentation, and then some more. The software was rubbish.

Agile provides high quality software because it simply wouldn’t work without quality. Look at TDD, pair programming, customer involvement, etc. etc. Its all about eliminating re-work, i.e. improving initial quality.

The tests produced by Agile developer are documentation, executable documentation at that but documentation all the same.

And reverse engineering documentation is actually the only sort worth having. Since design and requirements are emergent anything written in advance will change.

• “selling “agile project” as “fixed price & fixed scope” is mission imposible since scope of the project is not defined.“

False: it just means you need a different type of contract.

If Anonymous would like to reply to me please do, but please, next time you make some of these wild claims please explain your thinking or cite your evidence.

An interesting analysis in McKinsey quarterly about the increasing costs of off-shore manufacturing – Time to rethink offshoring. As is so often the case this piece is US centric, and it is about manufacturing not services, still, some of the data and analysis are worth looking at:

• Wage rises in China mean manufacturing workers now earn $4,140 a year up from $1,704 in 2003
• Weaker dollar also erodes the advantage (and since the pound is low at the moment the same is true in the UK)
• Higher oil prices mean getting raw materials to China, and finished products from there is also more expensive

They also hint at the delays in supply when you ship from China – because you have to order so far in advance and get stuff shipped.

In short, manufacturing high-tech products in China isn’t clearly cheaper any more.

And to proove the point, yesterday’s FT reports: “The latest cheap manufacturing site for European companies is not in Asia or eastern Europe but the US”. (Its a little more complicated than that but have a read for yourself.)

So what of the software industry? Lets apply this thinking, and extend it to India and elsewhere.

• Wages have been rising here too, I don’t know how much by but is manufacturing staff have more than doubled their pay IT workers can’t be far behind
• Weaker dollar has erodes the advantage (ditto the pound sterling)
• Higher oil prices mean flying staff between your offshore development centre and your actual location is more expensive

And of course you have the supply chain delays too. McKinsey doesn’t go into this angle greatly but there is a good analysis in Womack and Jones Lean Solutions: did you know stores have to order their Nike’s a year in advance? Bottom line: you can have lean manufacturing on the other side of the world but you face challenges if you want a lean company spread over that distance.

Regular readers will know I’m all in favour of developing software in India, Malaysia or wherever. However I think the benefits are exaggerated. Or rather, the downsides aren’t appreciated. Somewhere there is a balance.

People I know who know about graphics and data visualisation tell me Edward Tufte is The Authority. I also hear he is a great presenter and his tutorials worth attending – if you into graphics and visualisation that is. So when I see his name on something I pay attention.

As regular readers know I have a thing about Conway’s Law. So when Tufte’s name came up in connection with Conway’s Law on a recent search I paid attention. Tufte’s point is actually about the inadequacies of PowerPoint.

I agree with him. I really dislike PowerPoint and wish I could give it – and similar tools – up. I’ve blogged about this before. I should report I have failed to give it up. I have two up coming presentations – BCS Project Management and Oredev – and I’ve prepared PowerPoint decks for both.

Why?
• Because they are a crutch to lean on, parts of me is scared without it
• Because the event organizers expect it
• Because I want the attendees to have something to take home
• Because it helps to plug my book (nice big picture!)

The comments and links on Tuft’s piece are even more interesting. Seems NASA are concerned about engineering by PowerPoint and the US military also have PowerPoint trouble.

All the more reason to redouble my efforts and kick the habit.

Once in a while I get asked my opinion on Open Source Software projects. Personally I think Open Source software (OSS) is great: Apache, GNU C++, Linux to name a few. But as a project management or product development technique I can’t say I recommend it. There are two reasons I give for this.

First there is no single OSS development model: Apache has a stack of IBM cash, GNU C++ is largely volunteers with chip makers (and others) contributing expertise and resources to help their own products, Mozilla was seeded by Netscape and has done a good job of marketing itself, etc. etc. Some OSS projects have paid development teams, some have single individuals and so on. It is not enough to say “We will do it open source” you need to be more specific.

Second: most OSS projects fail. “Go look at the number of web browsers on Source Forge” I say – a quick search this morning shows 19,362. There are lots and lots of OSS project that go no where. Commercial projects (famously) fail too but the important point is: OSS is no silver bullet.

So with this in mind I was interested to find and read a paper by Kieran Healy and Alex Schussman from the University of Arizona entitled: The Ecology of Open-Source Software Development. Although from 2003 I think the analysis and arguments probably still stand. (This paper appears in several places on the web so I guess it is already well know, maybe I’m late to the party.)

The authors did some analysis on projects in Source Forge and came up with some interesting results. Basically it turns out that when most people talk about the Open Source model, and successful examples, they are talking about the top 1% or less of all Open Source projects. The true OSS model has a long tail.

Taken as a whole OSS projects follow the Power Law – its that law again! The authors say:

“The median number of developers is one. The 95th percentile is 5. Relative to the whole field, only a tiny number of projects have more than a handful of developers. The median number of cvs commits is zero. At the 75th percentile it is 1 and at the 90th percentile it is less than 100. This indicates that there is little or no programming activity taking place on more than half of the projects. Examining the number of message authors across all forums shows that only projects at the 90th percentile and above have more than two contributing message writers.”

And later:

“In summary, we found power-law type distributions for all activity measures in our dataset. In each case, a tiny number of projects dominate an activity-type when measured by volume.”

The projects which are actively developed (in this study these include Crystal Space 3D, Open CASCASE, gkernal) are not the most downloaded (in this study CDex, VirtuakDubm ZSNES). In fact the authors say:

“Measures of user interest in a project — such as site views and downloads — are not closely related to measures of developer activity on a project.”

So what are we to make of these findings?

Well I think it bears out my initial comments. OSS is no silver bullet.

The papers authors propose three hypothesis for further consideration – and given that the paper was five years ago they may well have developed these further.

First they suggest that the involvement of professional developers is key. Despite the gifted ametuer image of some projects it helps to have professionals along. Second the role of project leader is critical – nothing new here perhaps but more evidence that OSS alone is not enough. (Actually, I was reminded of Fred Brook’s Chief Programmer model while I was reading this.)

And third, most interesting to me: the authors suggest that successful OSS projects with have hierarchical structure between leader and development team. Many OSS proponents (e.g. Eric Raymond) suggest a more chaotic structure in OSS projects which may not be the case (remember Healy and Schussman are suggesting a theory here without proof).

Personally all three suggestions ring true for me. There are wider lessons here too for the Agile and business communitiies.

There are those in the Agile community who see it as a route to emulate the success of OSS. However this study shows that the OSS success if not good enough for commercial projects.

Second some elements of leadership and hierarchy are necessary to have a successful project. In other words, relying exclusively on self-organising teams and emergent behaviour may not be enough. Some element of control is justified.

In the business community there has been a lot of talk in the last few years of applying Open Innovation – that is applying Open Source ideas to business problems and products. Proctor and Gamble have one example, Walkers Crisps in the UK is trying an Open Source type idea at the moment. If the OSS experience is anything to go by open innovation may come up with some good ideas but it is not enough alone.

From time to time the dark side of Lean surfaces. On the whole a lot of this dark side is bunk (rubbish), Lean gets the blame for something that isn’t really anything to do with Lean. Though Lean is not without its problems most of the well publicised cases (like karoshi, death by overwork) seems to have more to do with (Japanese) society than Lean itself.

But it hadn’t occurred to me until today that there were also financial problems with Lean, or to be specific, the transition to Lean. The summer issue of the MIT Sloan Management Review has a piece about financial problems (How to Manage Through Worse Before Better) which can afflict companies transitioning to Lean.

Although this piece is about manufacturing companies not software companies I think its worth discussing the reasons and how they might also effect software companies:

• Lean companies hold little or no inventory, so a company transitioning to Lean will reduce the amount of completed work held in stock (not to forget raw materials and work in progress). But this stock is also shown as an asset on the balance sheet. So reducing inventory reduces the value of the company.

• It is not only the transition company which hold stocks, so too do customers. As the company becomes more Lean the lead time for orders will reduce so customer no longer need to order so far in advance and hold buffer stocks. They will adjust their orders, rather than ordering 6 weeks in advance they may order 1 week in advance. Therefore sales will appear to reduce as customer change their schedule.

• Although the Lean will make the company more productive in the short run it is difficult for the company to realise this benefit. It is not possible to reduce the work force during the transition because managers and workers need to co-operate so managers can’t fire workers (well you could, but imagine what it would do to the rest of your change programme).

• Neither can the extra productive capacity be used for new manufacturing because the company is still in transition and it takes time to introduce new products to manufacturing and optimise the system along Lean lines.

So what about software companies? Actually I think they do, perhaps to a lesser degree:

• Software companies don’t hold stock, but work in progress could appear on the balance sheet, it all depends how the company accounts for R&D so this could be an issue.

• Customers might delay orders once they know they can, this depends on your sales model.

• Software companies face the same problem in laying off surplus workers, if anything the problem is worse. Even though most software companies I’ve ever seen don’t have enough people to do the work they are asked to it these benefits won’t show on the balance sheet or cash flow statement.

• Finding work for newly available resources is also going to be a problem. I’ve blogged before about the importance of Product Managers and the idea that The Bottleneck has moved – if you have developers who are more productive you need more Product Managers – so costs will go up!

Actually things might be worse in software development because of the quality issue. A Swiss friend of mine claims that his software company was forced out of business when they adopted TDD and improved quality. It seems many of their customers were buying new versions of the software, and paying support fees, to get bug fixes. Improve the quality, reduce the bugs and why do they need to spend more money?

My reply is always: its not much of a business model if you rely on your customers paying for fixes. But the point here is that during the transition phase you loose the revenue before the benefits kick in.

I’ve not read the second half of the Sloan piece yet so I don’t know how to resolve these issues but I think this analysis is helpful in understanding why companies find it hard to transition.

I was expecting slightly more response to my “Why managers don’t get Agile” post last week because this is an issue that comes up again and again and again. Hans Wegener (of metadata fame) did respond and for some unknown reason his comment ended up on the wrong blog post (May’s post on making strategy) – his comment is here.

I certainly didn’t intend to come across as anti-control. True, I do believe that less control and more self-organization can improve results but I know that some control is necessary. The point i was trying to make is: Agile methods do not discuss the role of the manager much, and they appear to loosen control on the development effort. Therefore it is hardly surprising that managers don’t “get” Agile.

Actually I believe that Agile development improves control in an organization for several reasons.

First the illusion of control is exposed. Estimates, GANTT charts and “management by exception” never really controlled development work, they just presented an illusion of control. So much upfront planning was just planning theatre, it never really changed much, development work carried on much the same, work took as long as it took whether the estimate was 1 day or 1 month. Agile strips away many of these illusions – that’s why it is painful at first.

Secondly Agile improves control because work can be stopped at any time and still produce benefits. Stop a traditional project half way through and you have a lot of code which implements some features but is so full of bugs that it is usually unusable. Stop an Agile project half way through and you may have fewer features but the features you have are usuable, there is no need for a test-fix-test cycle.

The removal of the test-fix-test cycle also improves management control. Traditionally this cycle takes up an unpredictable amount of time at the end of the project. Because it is unpredictable control is lost.

Third – and final for the moment – because Agile teams are focused on delivering what the business wants they don’t develop anything else and do deliver what was asked for. Again more effective control.

However this third point does put a responsibility on the customer/business side of things to be able to articulate what it actually wants and to take a part in creation and verification. Again this might look like a loss of control but it isn’t.

For example, a traditionally request might be “Add a widget to the website” and at some unknown date in the future the widget would be added – the colour, size, shape and functionality of the widget might not be what was expected but was there. Such a request given to an Agile team is likely to result in a whole bunch of questions: “What shape do you want it? Colour? When by?” etc. etc. This might look like a loss of control but in fact the team is giving more control to the requester.

One of the things I always tell clients is that Agile exposes problems, and in this case a problem with the management of IT work has been exposed.

Hans ends his post with the comment: “I can’t prove this, but I have a theory: developers don’t “get” management” and I have to agree with him. Superficially management is like coding, its about organizing stuff, connecting things and putting things in order. However it is very different: the fundamental building block of management is not lines of code but people. Mangers work in ambiguous environments with a lack of information and few ways of testing a hypothesis.

I’m also convinced that many (even most) of the problems software development faces are the result of poor management not technology. Developing software may look easy but it is hard, not only do you need good coders and testers but you need good managers. Being a good coder does not make you a good manager and being a good manager does not make you a good development manager.