HowIKnowWeAreAgile

The team I work with is agile. We do XP, but that's not how I know we're agile. I know we're agile because there's a graph on the wall of the development room that shows our ProjectVelocity each iteration. We've done about 30 two week iterations, so we've plenty of numbers to work with. What the chart shows is that, right now, on average, we're doing productive work for the customer about twice as fast as we were this time last year.

We're going twice as fast even though we had to change from Java 2 Standard Edition to Java 2 Microedition (different VM, libraries, build etc etc).

We're going twice as fast even though the operating system version we work against has changed significantly, twice. Different APIs, different behaviour.

We're going twice as fast even though the build system we use now is not only not the same as the one we used a year ago, it isn't even written in the same language. (And the new version came without any documentation, and it had defects in it)

We're going twice as fast even though the other subcontractors send us new releases of components we depend on every couple of weeks, the APIs change, the behaviour changes, things break that worked last time.

We're going twice as fast even though our supplier changes the basic libraries all the subcontractors depend on every few months. Since we're re-implementing some of those libraries, for us that's like having someone on the team who took a branch a year ago, and has ignored all our chages since then. But we still need their stuff.

We're going twice as fast even though the other subcontractors don't meet their commitments to deliver components upon which we rely.

We're going twice as fast even though three people joined the team (and one left again) with no prior knowledge whatsoever of the kind of work we're doing. They had to learn it fom scratch.

We're going twice as fast even though requirements come and go monthly.

We're going twice as fast even though the hardware platform we use for testing has changed three times.

We're going twice as fast even though almost nothing about the project is the same as it was.

That's how I know we're agile.

--based upon a speech given by KeithBraithwaite at Ot2002, while standing in for SteveFreeman.

And that's how I know we're agile, too.

The project is over. There's another graph on the wall, it shows (per iteration) the total number of stories known at that time, the number begun but not completed, the number completed and the number not even looked at since they were written on a card. The project is over, the customer is happy, and one fifth of the total "requiement" hasn't even been considered.

And that's how I know we're agile.