Category: customer satisfaction

Stories From The Battlefield: #1 - Make It Awesome

November 27, 2008 by Janusz Marcin Gorycki

Photo (c) Janusz Gorycki

I would like to start a series of posts, named "Stories From The Battlefield". As the title suggests, I will be describing trails and tribulations of the agile team I am a part of. I want to write about our successes, failures, things we do right, things we struggle with - the real deal, sometimes great, but sometimes rough at the edges.

I hope such a series may be of value to many of our readers, especially those beginning their agile journey and hoping to learn on somebody else's mistakes.

There won't be much theory in here - this is being covered in sufficient detail by other authors on this site. Rather, I will concentrate more on "soft" aspects of what makes an agile team.

Let's start with a fundamental question of "Why?". This question is so basic and simple, that it sometimes eludes many of us in our day-to-day work routines. So why bother with an agile process? It does not make you produce software faster - despite popular myth. It does not necessarily bring higher quality - at least not automatically. It does not let you work less hard - on the contrary, you are supposed to be an efficient long-distance runner. Why then?