See Part 1 of this series here.
You might even be an agile pastor and in that case you’re probably thinking… “what an outrageous idea!”. May it is, but I still remember Rebecca. She is a wicked smart software engineer I once worked with. As I attended multiple meetings with different software teams as the designated “Security Expert”, I gained a different perspective on Agile development.
Rebecca always seemed tense. Actually, everyone on the team was smart, but they always seemed very anxious about their software project. As well they should be, you might think, as I did. One day, I attended Stand-up for Rebecca’s team. It was even more tense, as attendees rattled off yesterday’s successes and tried to make a case for the failures. I remember looking around, the unease on each face was obvious. A few years later, I had my first stand-up over the phone and it was no different… terse and strained.
Why all that unease, I wondered? And could it be any different from what one might encounter in any other job where employees seek to perform well and succeed? I think it’s different. A friend of mine once said that in agile development, more than most other jobs, you give an account of the accomplishments of your hours, everyday.
Let’s compare that with a waitress at a busy restaurant. The waitress might be on the go non-stop during a shift, but I’ve never heard of restaurants where waitresses had to report on how many tables were served or how many plates were carried the previous day. If restaurants were to run in agile, servers would also have to answer these questions:
- What went wrong yesterday
- Any blockers
- What do you plan to do today
If that isn’t micromanagement, I don’t know what is.
