Last night we had a great meeting at AgileRTP, our local Agile user's group. Jason Tanner of Enthiosys spoke on Agile Transitions. It was more of a facilitated group discussion and went very well.
Some of the topics discussed include:
Barriers to Agile adoption.
- Perceived lack of planning
- Perceived lack of control
- Fear of transparency (from people who like to hide)
How do enable people to try something new? Create an environment of safety.
Most people assumed that "emergent design" was inherent to Agile, but as we discussed it, most people were referring to "just enough" architecture, not "make it up as you go." Just in Time Architecture? (JITA)
Developers who fear a loss of control are really fearing the exposure that Agile brings. There's no where to hide in a two week iteration.
Questions of scalability and emergent design were discussed.
Planning Poker was mentioned too.
As always, it was a great meeting with a lot of audience driven topics. The only handout was a mind map!
