The Dog Ate My Software: Agile is not Undisciplined

Dietrich Kappe, Monday, January 4, 2010 @ 5:00 am

photo credit: LKaestner

Back in college I used to work at the main campus computer center. That was back in the days of time sharing Unix and mainframe computers, so it was a great way to get some extra CPU time for my various projects. Besides locking up at closing time (I loved to work the 10pm-3am shift), I had to change toner cartridges, support the brick macs, windows 3.1 machines, and the various Unix and Mainframe terminal users.

Over time, you learned to identify various user types. The vast majority of users had simple "hey, how do I do this" or "this ain't working" types of issues. Of the rest there were two main problem user types: the "helpless bunny" and the "walking crisis."

The Bunny displayed profound helplessness in order to get you to do their work for them. The first time I had a Bunny, I was caught unawares and spent the better part of my shift formatting their document in Wordperfect. With subsequent Bunnies, I used tough love and gave them manuals and man pages to read.

The Walking Crisis was typified by the grad student who waited until the last moment to add end notes to their masters dissertation, and dammit, if they were going to suffer, you were going to suffer. Their technique was to try to convince you that their problem was your problem, i.e. the fact that they couldn't do two months of work in five hours was a shortcoming of the software, and thus a support issue.

The more enthusiastic you were about helping users, the more susceptible you were of being dragged down by the Bunny and the Crisis.

Professional Software Development

When I left school for the big time of professional software development, I quickly found the Walking Crisis existed there too. When these problem types were in position of influence or even the project stakeholder, then they didn't just make the life of one person miserable, they could whipsaw and demoralize an entire team. And while they were poison to a team, by themselves they were capable of pulling heroic all-nighters to make up for their lack of discipline. This perceived capacity for hard work (minus the self-inflicted need for it), often puts the Walking Crisis into positions of power.

It was around this time that I became a fan of professional project managers. If you were lucky enough to get one of these rare beasts on one of your projects, you at least had a chance of surviving. If the Walking Crisis procrastinated decisions, a good project manager could ring the alarm bells in advance of any software death march.

Agile is not Undisciplined

When I began to embrace the joys of Agile Software Development, the Walking Crisis made a strong comeback. Since Agile software development methods embrace change, the Crisis can delay all the hard decisions and work until the last few iterations and slip them in as some basic change.

Of course the same things could happen in a more traditional waterfall model of software development, but somehow lots of folks have the idea that Agile is just fast and loose and undisciplined. Nothing could be further from the truth. In Agile you grapple early and often with schedule and scope. From the second or third iteration you are dancing with velocity and the backlog, making decisions on what is in or out.

Be Careful in Choosing Your Product Manager

If your organization is developing software, you may be in the position to choose the product manager or software development liaison. Pick someone you already know works well with teams and has a good grasp of your business and the marketplace. Be careful that you don't mistake their heroic "Walking Crisis" efforts for competence, else you may be condemning your software product to failure.

Related posts:

1. Agile Development for Product Managers: Why Agile Testing Rocks
2. Agile 2009: A reminder of why each team needs leadership
3. Agile Software Development and the Lazy Client Trap
4. Review: Leading Lean Software Development
5. Agile, The Control Paradox, and the Boring Software Manifesto

Comments (1)

Software Development

Comments: 1 so far

• Leave a comment
• Comment feed for this post
• TrackBack URL

1. 

   nice read. Funny and drives the point home.

   Comment by Sharad jain, Tuesday, January 5, 2010 @ 11:33 am

Leave a comment