Thoughts from a Thirsty Bear

An interesting truism from XP Day's final session, Have We Lost our Mojo : "Agile is a brand." If it is, then it must have some kind of value. Therefore it is worth protecting from second rate imitations.

A bug does not definitely exist or not until you exercise the code. You can either let your users find it, or you can write tests to flush it out. It's your call.

One of the more interesting sessions I went to during XP Day this year was the " Have You Compromised Your Agility? " session run by Gus Power and Simon Baker. Run in World Cafe format (complete with tablecloths and candles!) it set out to create an informal environment to discuss whether corporate attitudes are forcing agile and lean thinkers to compromise a step too far in order to become acceptable to traditional corporate culture. OK, I admit it. I was a plant. No I wasn't quietly photosynthesizing in the corner, I was invited there by Gus and Simon to be deliberately provocative, forcing difficult issues out into the daylight. My table was focussed on " Values ". Specifically, the premise was that some organisations have internal Values (and hence behaviours) that do not permit agile processes to develop and prosper but instead force them to mutate into grotesque, ineffectual parodies. The reactions were interesting. On the one hand there were a handful o...