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Embracing Agile

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Embracing Agile

I started eXtreme programming back in 2003 with the usual manager skepticism, but I had a small team and we demonstrated results very quickly and were allowed to continue. After I left Communisis I didn’t have much of an opportunity practice eXtreme techniques again until I worked with Allan Kelly (Allan's blog) in the summer of 2007.

Allan is a bit of an Agile nut and I expected to feel a lot like Trent Reznor learning my trade under the watchful eye of Al Jourgensen. Unfortunalty I only got to work with Allan for a few weeks. However, in that time I got up to speed by reading Lean Software Practices and watching Allen in action. At the end I felt like Reznor ready to take on the (industrial) world.

It is now early 2008 and I have joined another company and had no trouble convincing my new boss of the advantages of agile development. In fact he has fully embraced the idea of stories and cards. We have our first stories and a set of blue-white-red cards pinned to a white board. I’m looking forward to seeing how it can work for us and enjoying knowing where we are in the project and we are already able to communicate it easily to other managers.

We’re ready to go.

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