Agile Development... an unfamiliar journey?
Submitted by Antony Marcano on Thu, 23/02/2006 - 09:19.
agile
[textile]You may know where you'd like to be but you've never done that journey before... You have a map showing you several ways you might get there but you can never see further than the next bend in the road...
When you're driving where is you mind? Focused on the entire journey or on the short stretch of road you can actually see in front of you? You will have a stack of descending priorities where your brain spends more or less processing time. You:
1. Focus on what you can see in detail, directly in front of you so that you can make progress but be ready to react and adapt to the changing road surface or unexpected obstacles (like traffic or road closures)...
2. Have in the back of you mind the next turn you know you have to make whilst knowing that obstacles may cause you to turn off early and take a different route...
3. Have vague consideration, for whether there's another turn soon after that and in which direction
4. What town you are heading to and kinda how to get there in general based on your map
Sometimes, you may encounter fog which may slow your progress but all it means is that you can see less road ahead of you. Making constant progress through the fog-patch, albeit slower, will take you back to clarity again.
The more skilled and experienced the driver, the faster progress they can make safely and confidently. It always takes a certain amount of courage. The more practiced you are at it, the easier it becomes to take unfamiliar journeys.
If you absolutely have to get to where your going, do you wait and plan every turn of the wheel, every gear change, application of the brake? No, you just check the possible routes because you can't know what you are going to discover until you are actually on the journey.
Agility is more than just Test Driven Development (TDD) and Continuous Integration (CI), it is about making journeys and completing them in small increments. Those increments are the stretch of road you can see in detail ahead of you whilst keeping an eye on the road further ahead.
Practices like TDD and CI are your driver aids, helping you to make the journey safely and allowing you to swerve or make sharp turns when you need to without losing complete control and crashing.
When you're driving where is you mind? Focused on the entire journey or on the short stretch of road you can actually see in front of you? You will have a stack of descending priorities where your brain spends more or less processing time. You:
1. Focus on what you can see in detail, directly in front of you so that you can make progress but be ready to react and adapt to the changing road surface or unexpected obstacles (like traffic or road closures)...
2. Have in the back of you mind the next turn you know you have to make whilst knowing that obstacles may cause you to turn off early and take a different route...
3. Have vague consideration, for whether there's another turn soon after that and in which direction
4. What town you are heading to and kinda how to get there in general based on your map
Sometimes, you may encounter fog which may slow your progress but all it means is that you can see less road ahead of you. Making constant progress through the fog-patch, albeit slower, will take you back to clarity again.
The more skilled and experienced the driver, the faster progress they can make safely and confidently. It always takes a certain amount of courage. The more practiced you are at it, the easier it becomes to take unfamiliar journeys.
If you absolutely have to get to where your going, do you wait and plan every turn of the wheel, every gear change, application of the brake? No, you just check the possible routes because you can't know what you are going to discover until you are actually on the journey.
Agility is more than just Test Driven Development (TDD) and Continuous Integration (CI), it is about making journeys and completing them in small increments. Those increments are the stretch of road you can see in detail ahead of you whilst keeping an eye on the road further ahead.
Practices like TDD and CI are your driver aids, helping you to make the journey safely and allowing you to swerve or make sharp turns when you need to without losing complete control and crashing.