One of my favorite movie scenes is from Man on Fire, actually Denzel Washington is one of my favorite actors too.
Bad Cop: I’m really sorry for the girl. It was just business, you know? I’m a professional.
Denzel: That’s what everyone keeps saying. I’m Just Professional. Everybody keeps saying that to me. I’m Just Professional. I’m Just Professional. I’m getting sick and tired of hearing it. Do you understand me?
This is exactly what is happened to me. Everyone I meet keeps saying: I am just Agile I am just Agile I am just Agile I am just Agile - I’m getting sick and tired of hearing it. Do you understand me?
The story began when I started working as a Senior Developer and Team Leader. Every company I worked for said they were working with Agile and especially Scrum and they have a Stand-up meeting, Iteration delivery, and many other terms and practices.
[WOW they are really Agile !!]
In the first company that claimed to be working with Agile I didn’t know Agile well, so I believed the company and was very excited to learn how the real Agile works. After a while, and after I started reading about Agile I realized the truth: they don’t even know what Agile is at all and they Don’t Want to.
I tried to tell them about Unit Testing, TDD (Test Driven Development) or even Build Automation, or even well-defined Product Backlog or Burn-Down Chart but they didn’t agree and considered all these as optional. Their answer and explanation are very simple…
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[We are customizing the Agile stupid!!!!!]
[What kind of customization are you doing????? ]
[Poor M.Radwan he is not flexible at all !!!!]
So now we don’t work with traditional style or even Agile because we don’t have well-defined requirements or processes and we don’t apply the main basics of Agile that help us work as Agile.
I started contacting friends in other companies and told them about my story and it was a big surprise for me !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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[They are the same !!!!!!!!!!]
The problem is that now we have this knowledge, so people there talk to each other and they start believing their lies. Developers move from company to company to find the new company working with the same style of Agile, so our conceptual idea of Agile is corrupted and spread to many companies (95%). The rest (5%) I didn’t see them but I guess they maybe there. Whenever I explain the idea to them, they consider my idea to be the perfect world and ideal and not be applicable at all, and I am just another freak !!!!
This is why I chose the topic of my Thesis for my M.Sc. to be How To Transition To Agile and how to help companies and people implement the best practices of Agile and of course TFS and VS ALM as my tools for properly applying Agile Development.
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