Scale Back: Small is Beautiful
There is so much focus these days, and at Agile2008 especially, on “scaling Agile”, and it bothers me. There is something about that term that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Why does everything always have to get bigger? Isn’t the giant distributed team phenomena (and adding more and more people) the thing that caused the need for Agile approaches in the first place?
Going back a few years people just built software products on their own… Lotus 1-2-3 for example, pfs:Write, original Linux, or in pairs… the DOS operating system, most early Mac software. And even more recently there are some great examples of one-person projects, Orkut the social networking tool comes to mind. My contention is that bloated teams create bloated software, Agile or Waterfall, it’ll be the same problem.
I want to counter-balance this desire to be huge with at least one session at Agile2008 dedicated to exploring how to make Agile smaller. I imagine people attending this session will have the same concerns as me, so I’d run this as a 30-minute interactive exercise to produce something like “The Proclamation of Small Ideas”
Clearly, this is a tongue-in-cheek approach but the underlying discussion will be very real and very valuable. The real output of this session will be a renewed focus on the value of keeping teams and projects small and avoiding yet another journey to Bloatsville.
I’ll use a combination of games and breakout exercises to help craft the Proclamation (or whatever we choose to call it). It will be an iterative process and will allow participants to work in pairs and small groups as well as engage in whole group discussion. By the end we’ll have a sheet of flip chart paper with some words on it.
I’m choosing to restrict this to 30 minutes to make it fast and furious. It is also the smallest (shortest) slot, which seems appropriate given the subject.
Note: I have chosen the Questioning Agile stage as this session particularly questions the trend towards Agile in the Large.