Not.

We received a comment the other day on the Do Cubicles Kill post where an assertion was made that one of the key challenges with adopting agile is that you can only make it work with experts. The implication of this statement is that you can’t make it work with mere mortals.

Our experience is just the opposite. We have found more challenges in trying to integrate “experts” into our team regardless of their experience with agile. Given we’ve been practicing agile for nearly 9 years, it’s probably worthy of exploring this topic and reflecting on how we make it work without only experts.

What are the ingredients? Here’s what we believe we do that helps make this work.

We invented and practice Extreme Interviewing. During this process we screen first for kindergarten talents — do they play well with others, know how to put away their toys, do they not swear or bite — then for technical talents. This allows us to be very intentional about our culture.

We practice pairing, all day, every day and we’ve expanded pairing beyond programming. It’s the most powerful managerial tool I’ve ever discovered.

We choose who you are going to work with for each iteration. This was a tool we used when we were first teaching the team the value of pairing. They later came to us and asked us to continue the practice. They valued avoiding the social awkwardness that might happen if they were the last kid on the playground and no one wanted them on their team.

We maintain experts within earshot. We love having experts in various technologies and techniques. We also love having experience on the team. We expect our experts and experienced team members to be good mentors. Our goal is to not have our experts work in their area of expertise, but be available when needed (i.e. they’re working in other domains with their pair partner). This means our experts also get to learn new things, which keeps them growing and learning.

Our weekly kickoffs, estimation, and show & tells ensure that the entire project team has a common understanding of the work being done across the entire project.

The most thoughtful process we go through every week is resource planning. This is where we decide who is going to be on which projects, and who is going to pair with whom. This is an opportunity for us to ensure we’re getting cross pollination across projects, across pairs, and throughout the organization. Essentially this means we get cross-training and mentoring for free, every moment of every day. Most teams dream about “continuous improvement.” We get to experience it.

We practice on-boarding new talent every year through our internship program. We bring in 6-8 interns each year from around the world. This gives us an opportunity to check how we’re doing in terms of teaching our culture and practices to new people.

Finally, this is made a lot easier by co-locating and working in an open space. As we’ve joked before, it is true that we do not use e-mail to communicate with each other, we use High-Speed Voice Technology™. This creates an energy and enthusiasm that keeps all the other pieces working well together.

We understand the concern that many have that agile can only be done with experts. We would never consider building such a process ourselves because of the peril of dependency on individual heroes. For those who wish to see a working alternative, stop by for a tour. Many people do.

2 Responses to “Agile Only Works for Experts”

1. Bill Donaldson says:

   March 13, 2010 at 10:26 pm

   Rich, I’d like to disagree with your categorization PM Hut’s comment that Agile can only make it work with “experts.” I read the comment and PM Hut’s blog post and I think you both are saying the same thing: Agile can only be done with craftsman. A craftsman can be a novice or expert (see http://manifesto.softwarecraftsmanship.org/.

   For Agile to succeed you need people who are willing to learn and grow, and a culturing environment. Without these Agile can’t succeed, which is what I think you outline in your post.
2. Rich says:

   March 15, 2010 at 8:21 pm

   Bill -

   Thanks for the comment! I did go back and re-read the PM Hut blog post and I see your viewpoint in it. I would love to meet the author and show him around Menlo as there are some assumptions made that wouldn’t be true in our environment. I think we’d have a fun conversation!