mojo - kn

You have an idea. You’ve thought it through, and you’ve decided that software is the best way to bring this idea to life. At this point, you have a some guesses about how to improve the lives of your potential customers. You set out and you start building some features. You talk to customers and get feedback throughout the build, but eventually, you arrive at this question: when do you put working software in the hands of customers for real-world use? Some founders fall into something akin to the next feature fallacy: thinking that one more feature will finally make their product ready for release. However, as a small, early stage product, you have speed, flexibility, focus, and team energy that bigger products don’t. The best way to maximize these advantages you have is to release early and often.

Welcome back to my 3-part review of Bertrand Meyer's, Agile! The Good, the Hype and the Ugly. As a quick refresher, last time, in part 2, I took a look at what Meyer considers “hyped” about agile methods. In part 1, I took a look at Meyer’s take on what’s ugly about agile. This week I’ll take a look at what Meyer considers both good and brilliant about agile. Meyer considers these agile practices the cream of the crop and thinks they’ve done a lot for software development. I don’t see much difference in utility between what Meyer considers ‘Good’ and ‘Brilliant’, but I’ll review them as he’s categorized these practices.

Welcome back to my three-part review of Bertrand Meyer's, Agile! The Good, the Hype and the Ugly. As a quick refresher, last time I took a look at what Meyer considers "ugly" about agile methods. This week I’ll take a look at what Meyer considers "hyped" about agile. Meyer considers these agile practices neither helpful nor hurtful to building impactful products. While many of these practices can be beneficial, they need to be examined on a project-by-project basis to ensure that they are applied appropriately.

At MojoTech, we constantly evaluate our processes and tools to improve the way we build great products for our clients. We follow the Agile Methodology but employ its various techniques dependent on the needs of an individual project. Opinions regarding these techniques can vary immensely, so I, along with my fellow Product Managers, recently read Bertrand Meyer's, Agile! The Good, the Hype and the Ugly. Our aim was to brush up on our agile best practices and make certain we were avoiding its pitfalls. As a team we agreed with many of Meyer’s points, but we also found that in many cases, "it depends". I’ll take you through a three-part series of blog posts assessing Meyer’s points on "the good," "the hype," "the ugly," (and as a bonus, "the brilliant"), and whether our team agrees, disagrees, or feels it’s contingent upon the situation and context.

A developer from a client team recently asked me why we would need daily standups for the team. "That seems a bit too granular," he said. At MojoTech, we employ daily standups as an essential part of our development process. I've read a few articles and seen a few videos about the benefits of the agile/scrum process, but I'd like to share what we see here at MojoTech.