This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Ruby Buzz
by Michael Granger.
Original Post: Ceremony vs. Spirit
Feed Title: devEiate
Feed URL: http://deveiate.org/feed/rss/blog
Feed Description: A blog about Ruby, codecraft, testing, linguistics, and stuff. Mostly stuff.
I haven’t updated in a while, mostly because I’m stuck in Ohio slogging through the grotty back-channels of a death-march project, trying to shore up the walls of a maze of crumbling canals with tools I hate.
The irony is that this is supposed to be an Agile project. When done correctly, following the principles of the Agile Manifesto frees one from the mindless grinding against phantom walls that plagues modern software development. The trick is knowing which bits are important and which are just dressing.
The project I’m on currently is a prime example of what happens when people place too much emphasis on the ceremony of a practice, and forget the spirit of it.
Agile is an idea; it’s a set of principles which are designed to make developing software less painful and more adaptive. It doesn’t contain hard-and-fast rules for how things should be done, but rather guidelines or points of priority that are designed to narrow the gap between the decision-makers and the bit-arrangers. People get lost in the ideas of pair-programming and “iterations” and “standups” and forget that it’s the idea that people need to communicate as often as possible that’s the important bit. “Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.”
Our clients now have a good deal of skepticism about the merits of “this agile thing”, and it’s so damn frustrating because I’ve experienced agile when it works, and it works very very well. I just don’t know how to convey the importance of spirit, especially when half of the team is so clearly not interested in doing “touchy-feely” stuff like actual story cards and asking the customer what she wants.
There are times when you realize that you’re fighting a losing battle, and keeping up the fight after this realization is one of the most exhausting things in the world to do.
Previous Topic
