Tom Breur
5 July 2015
We’ve had enough
experience with Agile over the last two decades that most success factors have
probably been surfaced. Some stuff works, some doesn’t. Agile has its own set
of anti-patterns, and cutting corners (sloppy engineering, omitting
documentation, quick and dirty practices, etc.) in the name of “working Agile” is one of
those notorious anti-patterns.
The intentions are good.
We want to deliver value early. But the temptation of quick and dirty is
luring… If you ever get the sense that someone is trying to justify sloppy
engineering because “we are working Agile”, then you are probably on to
something. A slippery slope…
We don’t work Agile for
the sake of converting to the latest and greatest religion. As soon as people
refer to “Agile” instead of some genuine business value, preferable bottom-line
revenue, be weary. The intriguing question is how you can (best) help your
colleague? How do you surface the fallacy in this line of reasoning? Preferably
in a non-threatening way. After all, everybody is trying to help. Even if it
doesn’t always look like that (as Jerry Weinberg has
pointed out).
Some engineers hate
documenting. And so do I, for that matter. But if you take pride in your work,
you know it is “just” part of the job. Failure to write accompanying documentation
accumulates technical debt. In a
similar vein, the temptation of “quick and dirty” leaves the team stuck with
dirty, long after the quick as been forgotten. Not a healthy dynamic, either. Tricky
to deal with.
The single best approach I
have learned for reaching out, and attempting to “connect” with a colleague
that appears to be falling for this trap, seems acknowledging and appreciating
his good intentions. We are all trying to do “the right” thing. Let’s talk
about how to get there.
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