Agile Journal – Effective Agile Testing: Asking the Right Question

InfoQ: Touchy Feely Impediments to Agile Adoption

I missed this year’s Agile conference due to other priorities and commitments. Maybe next year.

I’m sorry to see such important subject matter continue to be referred to as “touchy feely”—an obvious slight to the realities of humans and collective performance. That type of language is going to continue to support people in casting aspersions on what obviously works and in disconnecting their brains from the rest of their minds at work as in the rest of their lives.

Another common phrasing is “soft” versus “hard” skills. I turn that around. I say that anyone with a brain can do physics, but dealing with the interpretive filters of humans and our relationships is truly both hard and worthy.

The truth is that the seductive suggestions of efficiency and specialization led us corporate types for decades to assume that we could each merely tune up the technical processing power of our brains, get plugged into a CRT, and produce role-based outputs that someone else would be responsible for integrating into a valuable solution that would make the company money and fund our paychecks. That never really has been true, and now agile approaches are proving just how much can get done when people share responsibility for the wholes, the parts, the customer, and the processes that weave wholes, parts, and customers together.

Thanks Amr for standing for the truly hard stuff.

By the way, I’ll be teaching my team skills course Knowledge Team Leadership: The Art & Science of Being Amazingly Effective in Any Team October 21-22 (yes, a new two-full-days format) in Boulder, CO.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…

Gemba Systems believes strongly that developing products is based in personal interactions. To that end they study and promote Responsibility Redefined™. Indeed, much of the second chapter of Amr’s book is devoted to personal agility a la Responsibility Redefined™. Here’s a snippet from that chapter:

“Self-directed teams aligned to a clear goal are the essence of agile behavior and the engine behind the stunning results that some teams claim for Agile. We believe that individual responsibility, as defined by Avery, is a prerequisite to such agile interactions. That is, responsibility, as defined by the Responsibility Process™ model, is necessary (but not sufficient) for successful Agile software development.” (Page 18, Chapter 2 Personal Agility for Potent Agile Adoption, Agile Adoption Patterns: A Roadmap to Organizational Success)

You can read a sample chapter Amr published at the Agile Journal site.

You can get a free download of an earlier version of this work if you would like to try before you buy.

And you can find reviews on Amazon, and at Peripatetic Axiom and Frazzled Dad.

People ask “Christopher, are you still working in agile project management, software development, and IT in general?”

You bet! Just because demand for Responsibility Redefined™ is spreading to other areas (and especially to executive leadership!) does not mean I’ve left the agile community. I just taught a two-workshop in Mexico City called

“Mastering Personal Agility for Executive Leaders” and I’ll be teaching my team leadership skills intensive in October called “Knowledge Team Leadership.” I won’t be at the Agile2008 conference this year for the first time in 5 years, but I will be speaking at QCon 2008 in San Francisco November 19-21, 2008.

The QCon line-up: Being Agile

Amr Elssamadisy has assembled an excellent panel for a day-long track he is calling Being Agile. I’m honored to be included and I look forward to spending the day with these experts. I think it will be an excellent track to check out, or even to attend QCon just to get access to these speakers…

Adopting Agile Practices

Amr Elssamadisy

Agility: Possibilities at a Personal Level

Transcendence and Passing Through the Gate