A while ago I worked with a rather large software company that had long used a homegrown waterfall esque development process. They had built up a custom system around their process, and were trying to move to more of an ‘Agile’ based approach. I believe what was driving this was a long history of buggy and late deliverables, along with high turnover and low developer morale.
I was happy to see they were trying to change what was not working and move towards something that they thought would help solve some of their process issues. What’s interesting is that they did this in a very closed environment, that is they were creating a homegrown version of agile with little input from anyone who had worked with agile in the past. They started having ‘stand up’ meetings, but since there was little definition of team the one stand up meeting included all developers (This made them very long). They also introduced the notion of iterations, although they had not altered how they managed requirements so tasks were not defined, estimates were usually multiple days and no acceptance criteria existed.
I got the sense because there was a stand up, and tasks were in iterations the management felt they were implementing an ‘Agile’ process. I have always felt agile was more about team ownership, inclusion and transparency. I found it ironic to see an ‘Agile’ approach enforced on a group without any of the group’s input, and with no transparency into how the process was being driven.
My experience with agile, which ranges from helping to design and implement a process to participating in those crafted by others, is that the ones that work focus on process that create a sense of team ownership and responsibility. A stand up does help with this and I like stand ups. I think what is more important, however, is including the team in crafting tasks that they agree are actionable and have acceptable acceptance criteria before assigning them. I also think having regular retrospectives so the team can regularly provide feedback is a great way of creating a sense of team ownership.
If you simply impose stand ups and put ill defined tasks into iterations you are moving in the right directions. My fear, however, is that the two alone will create little change or sense of team accountability and will simply confirm that there is no better way than the homegrown waterfall system currently in place. I hate to see organizations miss opportunities to make real beneficial change as these opportunities can be few and far between.