Succeeding with Agile

Don’t Change the Goal

Some of my early experiences as a programmer were in the litigation consulting department of a large consulting company. One challenge of working in that domain was the inevitability of change. Our bosses—the attorneys running a case—would have us begin a project that was to take a few weeks. Inevitably, though, partway through that project they would come running into our programming bullpen yelling, “Stop what you’re doing! The other side has asked for such-and-such. Now we need you to...” and they would redirect us toward a new project that would need to be completed before we could return to the original project.

Because of this background, one of the initial things I found appealing about Scrum was its emphasis on ...