[teampractices] [Engineering] Feedback requested on proposal for creation of Agile Specialist Group

Wed Mar 12 23:40:12 UTC 2014

On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 7:19 PM, Whatamidoing (WMF)/Sherry Snyder <
ssnyder at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Matt, I basically agree with you.  The problem is that hundreds of our
> "customers" do not.  Erik said the other day, "2) We do have a higher
> tolerance for breaking things".  Do you know who "we" is in that sentence?
>  Hint:  It's not our "customers".
>
> A noisy segment of our customers either don't believe Agile's promise
> (that frequent and early pain results in better products) in the first
> place, or they don't care that this is (probably) the best of the available
> options.  They're saying, "Stop poking me with a stick twice a week".
>  Agile proponents are saying, "Well, the only alternative is that we stab
> you with a big knife twice a year".  They are very loudly in favor of
> "don't poke me at all".
>
>
> TLDR:  When those anti-Agile users discover a proposal to spend half a
> million dollars a year on making sure that the users keep getting poked
> with sticks twice a week, then the people in favor of this proposal should
> not be surprised at the results.
>

Sherry, thanks for bringing all of this up. I'd like to do as Erik
suggested and include a 'benefits to end users' (or differently
titled/similarly intentioned) section to the proposal with the hope of
addressing this head-on. While I've heard rumors and grumblings about users
not being so excited by some teams' embrace of agile practices, I haven't
been a part of nor seen any of those specific conversations. Can you (or
anyone else) point me to some of those conversations so I have more context
and a better understanding of the objections?

-- 
Arthur Richards
Software Engineer, Mobile
[[User:Awjrichards]]
IRC: awjr
+1-415-839-6885 x6687
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