Being Agile: Eleven Breakthrough Techniques to Keep You from “Waterfalling Backward”

Breakthrough

Early in my experience with agile, a development team that I was managing was lucky enough to make a breakthrough with bullpens that transformed its behavior almost immediately. In fact, this breakthrough was so profound for the team that it changed my reflexive, waterfall-oriented thinking permanently. The team I was managing was having communication problems. A project consultant, Stan Rifkin, suggested we try bullpens to fix these challenges.

But let me back up and describe how we got to this recommendation. The first development team I managed that adopted agile got all the basics down quickly. Our daily standups became essential; we defined the work we planned to complete each iteration; and we demonstrated new functionality ...