Agile transitions are everywhere. Even if your company isn’t going through one now, there’s a good chance that sometime in the next few years an agile transition will affect you. This doesn’t have to be bad news, but I can virtually guarantee that it will create chaos and confusion. Wouldn’t it be nice to survive all that?

In this talk I highlight a few important points about agile software development, which will help you find your way through the transition. These fundamental ideas can help you avoid exhausting, pointless arguments with your colleagues and bosses. Some of them might even help you find an oasis of calm productivity in the middle of the storm.

If, by chance, your company is considering a “transition to agile”, and if, by chance, you can influence some key decision-makers, these ideas can help avoid considerable headache and heartache. Maybe. We’ll try.

Summary

• Not Waterfall v. Agile, but in fact Waterfall/Agile are on a spectrum.
• Essence of agile is early earned value. If you don’t agree on that, there nothing else matters.
• Agile is not meant to be a process; it’s a toolbox. Agile is not a video game with levels to conquer; it’s an approach to improving how we work.
• Evolutionary design/refactoring has, at its goal, reducing volatility in the cost of new features.
• Forget Cucumber, BDD is about business and technical people exploring the product together.
• Adopting practices as an experiment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQOmGiv7rUk (80 minutes of video)