Agile Adoption and Anti-patterns

Figure 1 - Agility Triangle

"We are going Agile", "We are Lean", "I'm a Scrum Certified Product Owner" - these are some of the classic one-liners most of us might have heard from different organizations and individuals in the software development industry. A classic response to such one-liners in a conversation would be an exclamation "Cool!" followed by questions like "What made you choose Agile?" or "How does a company get Lean?". It's a rare case when one responds with questions like "Are you sure you want to get Agile?" or "Do you have a set of DOs and DONTs while adopting Agile?".
In this article, I'm going touch upon a few key points that will help you decide if Agile is really for you / your organization, and remind you of some very key anti-patterns that are bound to reduce or negate the magnitude of success in Agile adoption.

5 Things You Will Like To Try

Finally, I have decided to re-start my blogging! Like I did mention in my New Year Resolutions post in December 2009, this has been one thing I’ve wanted to get going regularly, but has always been limping. To begin with, I thought of telling you what I’ve been up to these days. Hmm…no..I’m not going to tell you about a magic potion concoction I’ve been working on….but on some things that I’ve discovered, seen, done and enjoyed. Here are five of them -

1. Flipkart.com – I’ve enjoyed this website the most. Bought more than about 5 books so far, and I’ve enjoyed the experience of buying a book the most with Flipkart. Here is what I’ve observed about their service – Neat packing, Prompt delivery, Zero Disappointments (they have almost every title!) and of course Nice Discounts! Kudos to the folks behind Flipkart – Keep up the good work!

Appliances - The Emerging Market

People have for long got used to the concept of an 'appliance'. From the days when television was invented, mankind has been used to using appliances in one way or another. The very idea of being able to hold and feel a gadget is a satisfying experience.

The Atari video game, the video player and recorder, the cellphone, the walkie talkie, the iPod and iPhone are some of the very famous appliances that mankind has enjoyed. But I'd like to draw your attention to a very key point here - Most the appliances mentioned above took fancy in integrating more than one disparate functionalities into one. For example, the cellphone became an appliance that started to bring in a camera, video game, calculator, etc into one single gadget. So has been the way the market grew.

But today, we have started to see a 'U' turn in the way appliances are made - Companies have started to look at a way wherein some plausibly independent applications in gadgets can be used to address its niche market.

The Kindle kindles the fire! Yes, I'm talking about Amazon's latest product 'Kindle', an appliance that is in the size of a handbook, and can be carried anywhere to read books, newspapers and articles. Some years back, Amazon diverted people to online book reading. Today, Amazon is trying to separate the computer and the book reading application with this new device.

Again, such disruptive ideas and technologies create newer markets, and there will be several others jumping into this new market and flood it with their competitive applications and products till it one day dies out.

The product space has always been an interesting area to observe. I'm sure we'll have many other companies starting to make applications like bookmarks, sticky notes, messengers, etc for Kindle.

There is another place where the concept of an 'appliance' is now stepping in. More on this in my next post...