Meeting Monday 30th June

The Wiki page is open for sign-up.

I have to say in advance that I'll probably not make it to the meeting this time, but hope there are enough others interested to do so.

In any case, I'd like to suggest a topic for conversation:

My experience with introducing what are currently called Agile methods is that while is is relatively easy to get buy-in on a team level it becomes progressively harder on a departmental or organisational level.

Many years ago I led one of three teams whose work would combine into a product. My team finished first (and on schedule with acceptable quality) and was reward by being broken up to throw people onto the teams running late and with high bug counts. (On an individual level we didn't get the overtime payments either.)

On another occasion I was told that although I'd reduced the cost overruns on projects from an average of 260% to an average 0f 16% I was "too expensive" to be retained. Many of the better developers and some of the managers left the organisation around the same time. And the development practices I'd introduced were lost.

I've heard similar stories from others in the Agile crowd - success in getting a team or two up to speed and a few successful projects are followed by a reaction from elsewhere in the organisation that destroys the process changes that have been achieved.

Anyway, the reason for these musings is that I've been contacted by a lecturer at Loughborough university wanting to document successful introduction of Agile methods:

"My research is about the adoption and adaptation of Agile in organisations. The idea is that Agile presents a case of organising that is fundamentally different than what organisations used to. So to adopt the practices of Agile, organisations need to overcome many challenges and in a way adapt to Agile or adapt Agile. We need to understand the process of how this happened because Agile presents a rare case where IS/IT field could provide a significant contribution to other fields. So before we jump to implement Agile in other areas of the business, we need to learn how the IS community dealt with the issues and challenges that surfaced. This study is more about learning from practice. I do hope that you perhaps know someone who might be interested."

If you have something to contribute I can put you in contact.