The Urf Brood Blog

I’m part of a study group and right now we are reading Uncle Bob’s Agile Principles, Patterns and Practices book. The first chapter was a refresher on Agile and so I thought I’d write down what Agile meant to me. Thought I would post it here for posterity …

The key themes of agile, IMHO are as follows:

1. Communication - lack of communication will kill any benefits gained from the rest of the practices/tools. Good and regular communication is the best way to ensure that ideas, knowledge, instructions and caveats are shared amongst not just the team, but the clients as well.
2. Adaptability - only by knowing exactly where you are can you assess the impact of where you need to go next. Clean, well thought out, quality code helps you to turn on a sixpence when changes come in.
3. Deliver early, deliver often - the longer the period of time between the team working on code and the client reviewing it, the harder it will be to correct any misunderstandings or affect any changes. Also, the longer an iteration, the more likely it is to slip its due date.
4. Good people are _essential_ to an agile team, and not just as individuals. The whole team must also work well together. Also, the larger a team becomes, the harder it becomes to communicate and therefore the less likely it is for good quality software to be created. Personally I think between 4-7 on a team is plenty.

Feel free to tell me I’m speaking shite, as long as you do so constructively and back up your argument. ;)