I've read and been told that a transition to Agile is not an easy undertaking.  I under-estimated the resistance I'd receive to documented techniques and practices when the organizational leaders announced that it was their intention and desire to: "abandon our heavy waterfall process and go Agile."  I'd convinced myself that this was something that would be easy to sell once it came from the top.  I've come to realize, appropriately, that change takes time, even good change.  If its worth doing, its worth doing right and if it were simple, it'd be done already.

We recently had a meeting to discuss what documents wereto be authored, by who, who owned them and who the approvers or reviewers were.  A business counterpart of mine continues to ask about when "hand-offs" should occur.  Many insist that story cards are not adequate to convey requirements.  Business owners prefer a proxy from whom they channel all their communication with the team doing the work. 

I work with a left handed individual. When I sit at his computer, I cross my right arm over my left and operate the mouse with my arms tangled over one another.  Two other techniques that work much better are either to move the mouse over to the right side of the computer (revert to previous process) or to use my left hand on the mouse (adopt a new, unfamiliar technique).  I've found I am perfectly capable with my left hand operating the mouse.  However, Its slightly uncomfortable.  So I find myself crossed and bound up thinking that something must be wrong with this left-handed programmer.  I know, however, that my natural habit is the real cause for challenge and with practice it would feel more natural.  I'll have to remember to be patient and considerate of these long-established habits.

The ironic thing is that it was actually easier when everyone else stated that they were in favor of waterfall and I quietly and confidentially began researching how to manage a project with less ceremony and demonstrated the results of it in small, project by project, increments.  The first three projects lacked significant aspects of an Agile project but began to show the merits of the movement.  The most recent, http://preview.rentals.com,  lacked only frequent delivery to production.  We'd go as far as qa, then stop.  However, we were by no means fully implementing an Agile process.  We had facets of it: continuous integration, small iterations, automated unit testing, frequent communication, reflective review, collaboration, story card based development, just in time elaboration, pair programming, and others.  We still tested at the end of each iteration (not ideal) and some project contributors were outside the development process with little accountability.  We'd do sub-optimal things like extend dates to finish testing or fit a few extra features in.  Our review meetings would be postponed a week after the iteration was complete so that feedback from that review may affect work already completed.  I'm definitely learning as I go, we all are.  I am truly a fanatic about the change in approach.  However, there's a backslide happening lately...

In a book by Robert Pirsig - Lila, the author describes evolutionary change as having a ratcheting effect.  Things change, begin to fall back a bit, then they stabalize.  Then they change a little more, fall back a bit again, then stabalize again.  Stable patterns persist until mutation, or dynamic patterns, cause some change in the overall model.  If the new pattern has staying power, if it is superior, it will stick, and eventually become a static pattern.  If, however, it is unstable, it will fall back to the previous static pattern from which it evolved.  The static patterns are represented by the majority and the dynamic patterns are represented by the innovators and the rebels. Obviously, not all things persist.  Some good changes will be overtaken by a powerful competitive majority.  Sometimes several ratchets are needed to complete a massive redirection of behavior and sometimes people will have to fail before they will succeed.  Edison said that every failure is just one step closer to eventual success, or something like that.

My last note is that eternal question of: if there is no one in a forest who cares if trees stand or fall, should you bother to cut them down?  ...and if you do, should you do it your way or someone elses way?  ...and what the hell was I thinking getting into luberjacking in the first place?   I thought I was a guitar player