If you could only follow one agile practice, what would it be?

At the MXUG meeting this week, Steve Hayes was volunteered into giving a lightning talk. He asked for a suggested topic, and someone said “If you could only follow one agile practice, what would it be?” My instant comment was “Standups”. Later on Steve spoke about Kent Beck’s revised agile values condensed down to the trio of Accountability, Responsibility, and Transparency (which has good and bad aspects he said). Any practice that supported this would be good, but Steve chose retrospectives. I added my 2 cents worth that I would choose standups if quality was a major goal, as studies have shown that lack of communication in groups creates bugs particularly in larger teams. Linda Hayes has written about this, as has Mike Cohn in Chapter 10 of his new book . Standups also function as mini-retrospectives as well. They start conversations that continue after the meeting to help team members get better understanding of what they are delivering.

Standups have now moved beyond software development and are infiltrating other industries; I recall reading about the new HQ of an advertising company that has meeting rooms without chairs and bar counter tables to only allow standups (and cocktail parties!)