Living vSocial

On Being Agile

First, some words from some smart guys:

We are uncovering better ways of developing
software by doing it and helping others do it.
Through this work we have come to value:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on
the right, we value the items on the left more.

(from agilemanifesto.org)

So, what's this all about? It's about being able to develop -- both applications and the business that they sit inside of -- in a way that's relevant to a white hot market and fickle consumers and customers.

Our CEO, Mark looks at applications in terms of "jobs" -- that users hire applications to do a specific job. I think this is a wonderful analogy. One that I'll extend, and relative to my previous post, applications in today's world need to be like working for a startup. That job they have to do is going to change and need to pitch in doing other things. There's no way to do this with a traditional SDLC model, as far as development goes.

This is relevant because we've recently run across a few companies who have still been using such techniques, and they're finding it extremely hard to keep up with "the market" -- I still don't know what that means... but who does -- with 60 day build and QA cycles. I'm entirely unshocked. For me, if a feature's cycle is longer than 10 business days, it's not a feature, it's a project. A feature should be cycled in and out of development -- and put into a sandbox/showcase for users to test and QA for you -- in terms of hours/days, not weeks. Now, yes, I'm sure there's folks saying how there's cases that won't work. Clearly, if you have no sandbox and/or users, that doesn't work. But... it does! You have friends, peers, other coders, etc. If no one's testing this but you, not only with there be bugs, but you'll probably miss the usability issues that engineers tend to cause.

So... how's this relevant to business? Well, guess what, making strategic bets that you ride for 2 quarters without revisiting on a regular basis... that doesn't work anymore. At all. You need to be willing to adjust your focus and roadmap accordingly, or you're going to miss your mark and opportunity. Don't cause opportunity loss to the cry of "commitment to idea!" -- you have a core group of principles as a company, stick to those. Everything else is/should be market, people and time driven.

posted by webba @ 5:33 PM