Iteration Management – Post #14 – Keeping up

This post is a part of a series of posts about iteration management. If you want to start from the beginning, go here.

Iteration management tends to be very fast paced. I find this exciting, but at first it feels a little overwhelming. Several different analogies come to mind.

In the NFL, quarterbacks that come in to the league from college often have a hard time adjusting the pace of the pro game as opposed to what they were used to in college. Early on they tend to struggle, but as they get more experience, the game starts to “slow down” as they get used to the pace and they start to have more success.

When you try to ride waves in the ocean, you wait for the wave to come and then you start swimming as fast as you can with the wave to try and catch it. If you go too late, the wave will pass you by. If you go too early, the wave may pick you up, slam you into the ocean floor, and churn you around like you’re in a washing machine. But if you get it just right, it’s an exhilarating ride.

When you’re leading a team, there’s a lot to keep track of. You have to be able to juggle multiple things at one time, and things can get out of control very quickly. The trick is to try and keep everything in front of you, and as soon as you see things getting out of control, come up with a plan to address the issues and get things back on track.

If I had to boil all of the Agile practices and ideas down to one sentence, it would be this: Do more of what works, and less of what doesn’t. I don’t care if you do things “by the book” or not. All that matters is that you find the best way to be successful and keep trying to get better.

I think of Agile as a giant toolbox of practices, principles, and ideas that I can draw from to help me with whatever situation I’m dealing with. I follow many practices that are associated with agile methodologies, but most of the time I don’t think of our process as “doing Agile” anymore. Most people would say that we are “doing Agile”, but we’re just trying to apply common sense and creative thinking to find better ways to develop software.

I’m constantly trying to find new ways to improve the software development process. I hope that this series of blog posts have given you some good ideas for your toolbox that you can use to help your team be more successful.