Agile Culture: Where Should a Newbie Start?

This post stemmed from a post by Joelle Godfrey, Agile Culture: Where Should a Newbie Start?

After reading the article I asked ASPE President David Mantica to give me his thoughts...

There are a number of problems in life, one of the biggest problems is humans' crazy desire to make everything so darn confusing and over complicated. Ayn Rand was so right when she showed true genus tied to John Galt’s one-equation solution to static electricity. We are always trying to over complicate things to show our intelligence, when true genus is being able to take the complicated and make it simple.

Joelle Godfrey's post does a fantastic job of showing the very basic concepts of Agile for a beginner. Agile, in its purest form is one of those KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) solutions of true genus, but as with anything over the years it has gotten more and more complicated. Godfrey likens Agile and the different “flavors” of Agile to a nation and different districts. I liken Agile to an open source methodology and the different flavors as productized variants of the methodology. Much like Linux is the base open source Unix operating system and Red Hat and Suse Linux are different productized variants.

A basic understanding of Agile as a management method is critical before a professional can dig deeper into it to roll out a specific methodology flavor. The Agile Management movement is not for everyone. One of the main concepts that will stop many professionals in their tracks is the concept that co-workers and support staff must be treated like “adults”. When was the last time your manager treated you like an adult. Furthermore, some people can’t even define what an “adult” is. I have been asking that question in a number of presentations and getting some pretty interesting answers.