Scrum!=Agile

<rant>This morning I am having a rant. It’s been about 13 years since the Agile manifesto started an Indiana Jones like ball of rock crushing the old “water-fail” methods… How can it possibly be that developers and candidates out there still don’t know what Agile is?

What really grinds my gears with candidates is when they come to me and are asked to describe what the Agile Process(es) is/are they almost invariably say to me “Oh yes, we did do the scrum every day”… and then they offer nothing else. Thats it zip. Nada. Wow!</rant>

How can it be that developers think that doing a daily scrum is the be all and end all of being Agile? or that they think this is what Agile really is!. Maybe there are plenty of developers out there who really do know but I just don’t get to see it in interviews. For me in the interview process when a candidate states on his CV that he/she follows the Agile Processes and then they epically fail by saying “Oh I did the scrum” this is a really bad sign for me and I start to look for other reasons to then eliminate this person.

So please, take a word of advice, if you want to be really and properly Agile, and you are going to say that you are an Agile developer on your CV, realise that being agile is a lot more than just doing a scrum, I.e. learn about and think about iteration planning, release planning, user stories, continuous deployment, continuous integration, automated tests, release candidates, test driven development, retrospectives, the planning game (story poker), assumption testing, iteration slack, recognition of personal success, small batches, Genchi Genbutsu, pair programming, responding to change, scrum observers, mvp, build-validate-learn-pivot, spikes, commitment ceremony, live Bug fixing, weekly/daily releases, innovation accounting, customer collaboration and above all CLEAR, CONCISE and DIRECT COMMUNICATION to all levels.

Now whilst agile doesn’t mean using all of these tools at once, and there are other things on the list that I haven’t placed here as each Agile master should adapt the tools to suit the company and culture they are working in, it should be absolutely crystal clear that being Agile is not just doing the scrum. Agile is a collection of many things at once

For me programming is a very pure form of communication so that when I create a program or application for you that performs a task what you see it do and how it behaves reflects the businesses intentions and desires. This means that I have understood what you have asked, and I have delivered to you what you need when you need it. Without a full spectrum Agile process this cannot be achieved successfully.

So a word of warning to potential candidates, if you say that you are agile on your CV and all you think that is, is scrums, you will be found out. On the flip side for those of you that are open and honest on your CVS and say you are keen and want to learn the Agile way, then you will be most welcome and here you will have an amazing and real opportunity to enjoy the fun and success that is doing things the Agile way.

Regards Julian
Head of IT
Capital On Tap