Infecting a team with Agile: Part 1 – Preparation

One of the core tenants of agile is:

“Individuals and interactions over processes and tools”

But anyone that has done any work in an agile shop knows that to achieve many of the goals of agile you need to have certain types of tools in place to facilitate the process.  This past week I have been preparing for the start of our first sprint this Monday.

What I’ve been doing is picking and choosing tools to help implement many of the details in agile, here are a list of the tools that I’ve chosen and what aspect the process they fulfill.

• Google Spreadsheets – for user stories and task breakouts
• Google Sites – for tracking stand-up notes and logging issues
• Beanstalk – hosted subversion for well, subversion.
• Team City – continuous integration and deployment

In subsequent posts I’ll go into more detail about how I’m using each of these tools, and if i’m actually still using them.  One of the amazing things that I have found when working in an agile environment is that the process makes people far more open to change, so if we find a better tool to fit the need then we will switch to it.

Today was our first team (3 of us for now) lunch and learn.  We reviewed the first chapter of the Foundations of programming pdf.  The other 2 members of my team are junior and intermediate developers and I’m actually relishing the opportunity to share some of the things that I learned in my time at Q4 Web Systems (where i worked in an agile environment for 3 years).

I actually started infection the company with agile quite some time ago, from the top down.  I was brought in to take the company from a strict marketing company to one that focuses more on product development.  This is a big step for me and I’m committed to making it work.

Next up I’ll review our first sprint mid week and let you know how it goes!