How do you tell if a team is agile? If the last years trying to follow the principles of the manifesto taught me something is that in a good software project people want to be accountable.
We’re knowledge workers. What we deliver is a direct result of the perception of the problems we are exposed to. Yet, there are a lot of people trying to escape from the responsibilities our job requires.
Some of these responsibilities include:
- Design decisions (TDD)
- Impact of our changes on the rest of the project (CI)
- Sharing knowledge and the code where it’s represented (PP/Standards)
- Making sure what is delivered has any value (Reviews/Frequent Releases)
In this context there’s no room for peonage. Our job is basically to make decisions all the time and being agile is about making sure we can answer (and answer well!) for our actions.
That’s why I agree with Patrick Kua’s post about this topic. We have to understand the business problems and the possible solutions. We have to help each other to build something. We can’t stop learning. We can’t be limited by our normal role. And most important: we have to care.