What is the high cost of “low cost” software development? This is the tendency for people involved with financial decisions regarding software development to put too great an emphasis on the cost of software developers.
In the case of annual reviews we have such a wealth of evidence they do not work it is amazing so few companies have actually done away with them.
One of the reasons I have proposed the concept of CAO (Chief Agile Officer) is for situations such as these where someone at the top level of the organization can arbitrate using the entire organizational as a lens to determine best courses of action. It sounds like you are both on the same organizational level so it would help to appeal to a higher management level in instances where two of the same level cannot come to a satisfactory conclusion.
One of the things I have noticed during this time is, as Agile (and especially Scrum) have become more mainstream, the quality of individuals calling themselves scrum masters and agile coaches has become more variable.
When someone mentions “waterfall has always worked for us”, I believe this is an example of Type Three error. The real question – has waterfall been optimal? The example I always give is that the covered wagon was successful for transportation, but when I look out the window of a plane, I don’t see any crossing the prairie. In the case of those applying the values and principles of agile properly there is little doubt as to which is the airplane and which is the covered wagon.
Patterns, Anti-Patterns and Pilots. Not only does this option have alliterative qualities, but it also allows for a much greater environment for teams to self-organize and experiment. The process is simple. There are certain things that we know to generally work well for teams. One example is Behavior Driven Development (BDD). This would be considered a pattern.
So, if there are any “leaders” out there looking to make significant changes in your organization, like an agile transformation, please pay attention. If you want change, you must first remove fear. In its place, install some slack. Give back some time. Allow people to learn. Allow people to reflect. Allow people to change. Allow people to fail gracefully. You want to lead? Give them a reason to follow, something that aligns with their own intrinsic motivation. Stop using motivational junk food. Stop using fear.
We call our new effort 10XP Solutions. “10X” comes from the well known adage that the best programmers are ten times more productive than the least. The “XP” alludes to Extreme Programming whose emphasis has always been on high quality code, something that is central to the value that we bring to our clients.
When I talk to people about good Agile teams, especially good scrum teams, I talk about five attributes – size, co-location, dedication, stability and cross functionality.
As an agile coach and change agent I am always asked how maturity can be measured at the team and organizational level. What I have found over the years is that there is no lack of different checklists that can be used to give us these “metrics”. In fact, a recent Google search gave me a page that contains links to literally 41 checklists. In addition to these I have personally worked on many different custom checklists myself as if the 41 currently available do not adequately address the needs of teams transitioning to agile! Why is it that these already existing measures are not enough?