Q4. I first met you at XPDay2004. You were one of the keynote speakers. I loved your talk because it resonated with my own concerns about "Agile". Can you elaborate on those concerns? Do you still have them?
You bet!
For readers who were not there, the slides are at
Paper: http://www.gilb.com/community/tiki-download_file.php?fileId=50
Slides http://www.gilb.com/community/tiki-download_file.php?fileId=170
The good news is that some people who have practiced Agile thoroughly, now see my point - and realize that if we are to deliver value to our customers, we need to add to the conventional Agile vocabulary. We need to be far more explicit about what value improvements our stakeholder need, and how we are going to deliver them.
'Stories' and 'Use Cases', Features and Functions - are nowhere near what we need to deal with. Quantification of Values (Qualities) is essential. The Agile boys got the message about small iterations OK, but they completely ignored the message about quantified quality requirements. I put that down to immaturity. We are all immature at some stage. It has to be put right in time. Rapid delivery of the wrong values is still wrong.
A great example of a Scrum Master who 'gets it' is a friend I met at the Agile Business Conference in London, Ryan Shriver:
Ryan's home page www.dominiondigital.com
Slides… http://www.gilb.com/community/tiki-download_file.php?fileId=148
Goalkeeper Tool http://goalkeeper.dominiondigital.com
I have a very simple message to all those failed projects for which we are so famous, and will be more infamous:
1. Quantify the critical stakeholder values (current Agile culture does not understand 4 of 5 of those words)
2. deliver those values early and frequently. (delivering value to stakeholders is NOT the same as delivering code or a story)
The survivors will get it :)
My favourite theory of how to change our world: "no cure no pay"
No Cure Paper http://www.gilb.com/community/tiki-download_file.php?fileId=38
Slides No Cure http://www.gilb.com/community/tiki-download_file.php?fileId=85
I cannot believe there are so many managers, 99.999% of them, who prefer to pay for effort and failed results, when common sense says they should only pay for good results.
People called 'programmers' sometimes crowning themselves 'software engineers' , have learned to fleece these rich managers thoroughly. A fool and their money will soon be parted. Hang in there guys, it may soon be illegal!
Well, I'd better quit before I insult too many people, after all they have a right to use their company's money any way they want to?
Warm Wishes to You All
Tom
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