Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
After the first lab session, Mike began stopping by Al's office. At first, this
seemed fine to Al. Al would show Mike the latest product functionality, but
Al wasn't sure how to respond when Mike would ask for a change Al
believed was beyond the requirements.
Knowing that customer collaboration was a significant Agile practice, and
because Al wanted the project to be successful, he began staying late at night
and coming in on weekends to work on the new requests from Mike.
This situation is not uncommon when an Agile approach is first introduced
in a traditional development organization where developers have not previ-
ously experienced a close working relationship with a customer. It should be
noted that an experienced Agile coach should have prevented this type of
scope creep from occurring. Why this didn't occur is explained as we move
forward in this case study.
It is not uncommon when developers have not previously worked closely
with a customer to misunderstand “collaboration” as “giving the customer
whatever he or she asks for.”
CAUTION
Watch for a common sign of misunderstanding collaboration, such as work-
ing long hours to please a closely interacting customer.
Effective collaboration requires both sides to have an honest dialogue and
to be willing and able to give in a reasonably balanced way. When an
Agile
approach is appropriately implemented, work is planned and executed at
a
sustainable
pace. Let us discuss the way an Agile approach is supposed to
work with respect to task management, and how we got off track on
DART.
8.6 The Way an Agile Approach Should Work with
Respect to Task Management
With Scrum (a popular Agile method), there are two important task manage-
ment items referred to as the Product Backlog and the Sprint Backlog.
5
5. A Sprint in Scrum is the term used for an increment of development that is typically time-boxed to be
thirty days long.
