Minimal

If you’ve read this blog at all in the past couple of weeks, you’ll know I recently moved from a development job using agile methods to one using a much more traditional BDUF approach. It’s slowly helping me figure out what was good about agile and, perhaps, what wasn’t. Here are a couple of the things I currently miss:

Teamwork and having help available in the form of a pairing partner

Granted, in my last job, we didn’t always pair program. We told ourselves we should do, but we didn’t. However, if you were to suggest pairing on a particular task or request assistance via pairing, the help was always there. In my new job, it’s back to the old “you’re interrupting my work” school of thought. In my eyes, it’s everyone’s work. Yours is mine and mine is yours. Now take one for the team and get over here.

Daily updates

Monday morning, 10am, is when I now get my weekly dose of updates from my team mates. It’s a truly dull affair. The team leader buys us all a coffee from the in-house Starbucks-a-like, but it feels like a trade for your attendance. We all grab a seat (yes, it’s a sit-down affair) and jabber for 5 minutes each about what we’ve been doing while everyone else’s brain switches off. We’re then told what we’re working on in the next week and on to the next person. It’s boring and there’s no energy to it. No passion at all.

At least with agile’s daily stand-up meetings it felt like there was a purpose. The meetings were far shorter, punchier, more topical and, of course, more frequent. This meant they could be a lot more useful in terms of highlighting and managing risks. It also gave the project a feeling of momentum that I’m not getting right now.

As hinted above, this is, of course, only one side of the coin. I suspect there are also things about agile that I don’t miss as much as you might expect. Maybe I’ll blog about them another time.