Just some facts about AGILE

Thanks to my friend Kalos, who write a great article ( in Italian ), I decide write an article about AGILE and describe some of my ideas and opinions about this.  Let me introduce this post 🙂

 

A small disclaimer

In this post I report my opinion. My goal is underline some aspects of AGILE and the most common errors (mainly I saw in Italy) and hope this will help readers in a better understand of AGILE concepts :). My goal is to make the reader reason and make him understand that if he has to make a choice of this kind, he must reason well and not make a choice just because someone told him: Use this methodology: It works 😉

 

Use your head

First of all, when you decide use AGILE in work environment, think about this:

• I need this?
• How AGILE can help me?
• You know your real situation?
• Your Team need this?

Simple but Very Important Questions. So Let’s examine all 🙂

I need this?

You have to understand if your situation and environment need AGILE. Never, I repeat, never think about this: Others companies use AGILE, so I HAVE TO USE AGILE. This is the beginning of the problems. I use this sentence always during my Atlassian courses.

Agile software development is an approach....

as described in Wikipedia page of AGILE, so think about AGILE as a tool can help your team and you doing your job better. AGILE is not a universal SOLUTION for all problems. This is the focus. SO if you decide use it, well, be sure you really need AGILE.

How AGILE can help me?

Now, after you understand AGILE is one way to approach problems, an approach you can use to manage situations, you have to understand how AGILE can help. So examine how AGILE works, how works in specific situation and what are the possible results your team and you can obtain.

Remember: Don’t use a tool or use an approach only for the reason: my villain competitors use it and win. Use a tool or an approach only for improve your job. No way.  🙂 There are many advantages of Agile methodology for project management and you have to see and analyze them :). Mainly:

• Visibility of project details
• Increased team efficiency
• Ability to adapt to changes
• Ability to scale

Using AGILE team can manage change better than others approaches and manage better the change.

You know your real situation?

Before make a decision, you have to understand the real situation of the company. Analyze, Analyze and Analyze again. Remember that AGILE provide a lot of rules/way of think but you can need only few of them for you goals.

Do not focus on the fact that you have to apply all the rules. Focus only on what you need and use it to improve your work. 🙂

A sentence: Don’t be a Taliban, be a wise 🙂

 

Your Team need this?

Listen to your team and check what they need. Do not focus your reasoning listening only to what is told in the events of AGILE, always trying to understand what your team needs.

The goal that you must ask yourself is to understand the real needs and to always put them in the foreground. If you can recognize them, you will always be able to understand the problems and solve them. So your goal must be this.

Conclusion

I wrote some of my opinions on what you, reader, must think before you can switch to using AGILE in your work. Using AGILE only because our competitors use it does nothing but make our situation worse. It must be understood that AGILE provides us with a new way of approaching problems and solving them. We try to understand this point before proceeding.

Suggestion

Read this article to understand the advantages of AGILE.