Tag Archives: Agile Software Development

Agile software development is an iterative, evolutionary practice based on a set of values that prize individuals and interactions, working software, customer collaboration, and responding to change.

An outlier to the outliers, observations of an agile practitioner at an academic conference

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Molokini viewed from the Grand Wailea HotelI presented my paper “Agile Values, Innovation, and the Shortage of Women Developers” at the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences #45 (HICSS) on Thursday, January 5th. I’ll publish out my presentation notes in this blog over the next week. I’ll also link to the published paper when it is available on the IEEE website.

A puzzling experience

I’ve presented papers at HICSS before. Mostly in the Agile track chaired by Jeff Sutherland. I did present once in a more purely academic Ethics track.

In this case, HICSS had two “Agile” tracks. And the one I submitted to was actually not Jeff’s track. Kind of amusing. But also kind of NOT as the real reward of this conference has been the mix of educators and practitioners. By having two tracks, HICSS split the audience. I was in an academic track with an academic audience.

I am a digression

As the whole topic of Agile is a minor footnote at this conference, I found myself an outlier to the outliers. Or as the chair of my mini-track at this conference called my paper, “a digression”.

I will admit it. My paper is a digression. It was off topic here. It would be off topic at a professional Agile conference. That doesn’t make it irrelevant and I’m grateful for the reviewers who allowed it into the conference and the people who attended my talk.

It is about what our industry and our peers do to discourage and drive away women from software development and how Agile values can help practitioners find the courage and focus to fight this. Like I said, I’ll start publishing out my notes this week.

Just another process

I should have realized I wasn’t proposing into Jeff’s mini-track just based on the title: “Agile Software Engineering“.

Just the use of the word Engineering will inflame the passions of many very good Agile practitioners. I am not one of them. I understand “craftsperson” and “engineer” are freighted concepts. But I am the son of an Engineer and spent over ten years working in theater while becoming a paid software developer. I know that both terms imply a love of disciplined execution, a dedication to excellence, a sense of personal responsibility, and a society of peers.

However, in this case the phrase Agile Software Engineering spoke to an overall tone of the day I’d summarize as, “Really, agile isn’t so different from everything else. It’s just a process framework. Just some practices that apply in some cases and don’t apply in others. A good developer will do good work in spite of the process they use.”

The heart of my concern

This is entirely true if you focus on the practices but this characterization of the Agile movement gets to the heart of my concerns about widespread Agile adoption. Agile adoption isn’t about the practices. It’s about the principles behind the practices.

If you don’t have those values instilled into your team and aren’t working incrementally to install those values into your organization. You can call yourself agile but don’t characterize your understanding of what that means as the sum total of what Agile practice represents.

I don’t claim “Agile” is the one answer

It is clearly possible to build a team oriented, collaborative organization without calling your values, Agile.

It is also possible to get through life without wanting to work on a team or to collaborate with anyone. Not every software professional can or wants to embrace these values or would be successful if they tried. And you can build decent software in such a work place.

I also know there are now a plethora of shops that promote their “agile” process that wouldn’t acknowledge an Agile principle if it stood in front of them naked. They don’t give a rat’s ass about their coders — they consider team formation an org chart decision and wouldn’t tolerate self-organization for a second.

My path

But I know after years of hard won experience that Agile principles are my path to an empowered, humane workplace capable of producing work I am proud of that delivers for the business and addresses the needs of end users without exploiting and disposing of talented individual contributors along the way.

So, yes, some agile practices may be a prescription that can be applied selectively. But “Agile” as in the set of values I go to work with each day and come home with each night? That is me. Not my toolbox.

Working on a paper about women in software development

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dandelionI just submitted a paper on agile values and the underrepresentation of women in software development.

This is not an original topic but the research I’ve read has focused on how women who participate in agile practices, particularly XP pair programming have more favorable impressions of the work and of their ability to contribute both of which are correlated to entering the occupation.1,2

My belief is that agile practices are tools but it is the agile values that give us the urgency, courage and insight to wield those tools towards a desired outcome.

That is, we are much more capable of making software development more tolerant and inviting of diversity if we believe we should do this as part of our core mission as Agilists to develop with craft and quality and to deliver value to our employers and our end users (do not forget).

So, the rough outline of my paper is this:

  • The shortage of women entering software development and disproportionate share of women leaving mid-career is real and measurable and well documented.
  • The problem is worse in IT than it is in almost all other areas of STEM because, unusually, the percentage of women in software development has actually declined over the last 20 years.
  • This shortage and particularly the attrition of experienced women developers represents a material burden to our industry.
  • Product teams that represent the diversity of their customers have a potential advantage in developing products that appeal to that diverse customer base
  • Women are at least the equals of men when it comes to influencing consumer technology spending and online activity
  • Therefore, it is in the interest of the industry to educate, recruit and retain women developers
  • Agile is a collection of practices united by a coherent set of principles
  • As agile becomes mainstream it is more important than ever that practitioners understand and embody these principles
  • The creators of the Agile Manifesto realize this and are calling us to a principled approach to our work
  • These principles are at stake when it comes to things that affect the competitiveness, insight into end users, and potential for innovation in our teams
  • If we engage our agile practices behind this principled cause we can begin to remove the impediments within our own organizations to the recruitment and retention of women
  • When we do, we will influence larger changes across the industry, within education and in society

I’ll go into more detail and try to defend my arguments in later posts. In the meantime, I’m happy to engage with anyone who finds fault in my premise.


1S. Berenson and K. Slaten. “Voices of women in a software engineering course” in JERIC, vol. 4.1, Mar. 2004.

2O. Hazzan and Y. Dubinsky. “Empower Gender Diversity with Agile Software Development” in Encyclopedia of Gender and Information Technology. E. Taugh, Ed. Hershey, PA: IGI-Global, 2006, pp 249-256.

The existential joys of agile practice: angel on your shoulder

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At Agile NYC I presented a pecha kucha. 20 slides. 20 seconds per slide. This is the fourth and final part.

Angel on your shoulder

play at your own riskAgile values call for honesty and trust. A shared ambition to do better and be better while causing each other less unnecessary pain.

I try to remember this in one on ones, retrospectives, coaching and in reflecting on my own decisions and actions.

The great thing about these values is that even as you strive towards them your co-workers will give you permission to demand more of them.

Just as they will demand more of you.

AngelThis demand gives you an angel on your shoulder. Watching you as you work. It inspires even as it shames you into substantial actions that go against your nature. And you do this because your team needs you to.

You invest in the hard daily work of adjusting your own bad habits one behavior at a time in the interests of the people you work with and the work you do together.

This isn’t easy. It’s mortifying. It’s scary.

TeamBut the reward is that you get to be the same person with your boss that you are with your peers that you are with your staff.

The reward is that you get to work at your best with other people working at their best.

And you carry that potential with you as you move on to other projects and other teams.

Building blocksUltimately, I want more than success on a project or in a particular job. I want a career.

I want to be proud of my accomplishments and I want to be proud of who I was as I attained them.

I want to spend my life loving what I do.

And I want to build things that are useful and delightful to people.

My pecha kucha topic was inspired by Samuel Florman’s book, The Existential Pleasures of Engineering

The main goal has always been to understand the stuff of the universe, to consider problems based on human solution, and to follow through to a finished product.

Existential delight has been the reward every step of the way…

— Samuel C. Florman

The existential joys of agile practice

  1. A family tradition of care and craft
  2. I want to live in our imperfect reality
  3. People over process
  4. Angel on your shoulder

The existential joys of agile practice: people over process

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At Agile NYC I presented a pecha kucha. 20 slides. 20 seconds per slide. This is the third of four parts.

People over process

Cathleen P. Black, who took over as New York City schools chancellor in January, at the Tuesday meeting of the Panel on Educational Policy.

Robert Stolarik for The New York Times

Cathie Black was Chancellor of New York City Schools for three months. She was hired despite having no education experience and no affinity for public schools, parents, teachers and students because she was, “an excellent manager”.

I love that agile doesn’t celebrate management. It relies on individual contributors. It relies on community.

painting by Eiko JudyThe oozy failure wrapped in the chocolatey success of agile is when we focus on process mechanics and lose sight of people.

If we do, our practice becomes arbitrary and abstract.

There’s a study that claims the best and worst performers have more in common with each other than those in the broad middle.

NYC Lego First PitsWhile the best are energized by their caring and use that passion to drive to the best outcomes, the worst are demoralized and ruined by it.

The indifferent middle, they just plug away.

When we impose a process upon a workplace to avoid failure. We rob the best performers of opportunities to engage and care.

Sunset Big IslandWe preclude the best in an attempt to avoid the worst and ensure mediocrity.

I acknowledge that successful products can emerge from awful workplaces. And that that good teams often create failed products.

But working in a way that tears down talented people’s desire for work is tragic. To repeatedly do this this is to sap the world of its limited supply inspiration, creativity and joy.