Agile Adoption Patterns: A Roadmap to Organizational Success
by Amr Elssamadisy
Links: Safari Books Online, Amazon
Learning is the bottleneck
Learning the bottleneck of software engineering. Agile teams succeed by accelerating the learning process by using Cycle processes.
The Learning Cycle - Iterations - Set a goal, Perform an action to achieve a goal, Compare the outcomes of the action to the original goal, change the action and repeat as needed.
Examples: Test-first, daily cycle, iteration, demo, management tests, scrum, etc.
Loops are nested within each other: i.e. test driven development iterations, within requirements development iterations.
Learning cycle is not sufficent - Communication is key:
Communication methods: Self-organizing team, co-located team, cross-functional team, pair programming, information radiators (i.e. charts and wall posters), evocative documents, stand-up meetings.