Agile: PHB's way!
I love Dilbert! Some of the strips are really ‘in your face’ type and this is surely one of ‘em.
It is true though, if you do not know a lot about Agile (except for stories from people who’ve tried and failed at it), from a distance it would seem that it’s just development of code, devoid of any planning, contract negotiation, risk management, documentation, blah blah and what not… it is in fact, anything but! Agile believes in all of the above PLUS MORE! that’s right, its as meticulous a methodology as any other out there.
The difference is, Agile tries to jog your commonsense (that’s why a lot of people fail at it 
if you know what I mean). It tries to break the mental block that most of us have against change. In short, Agile is not a process that you need to follow blindly… it is a mindset.
Repeat after me: “Agile is a mindset”… *echoes* MINDset.…MIndset…Mindset…mindset…mind..
It is a mindset that inculcates a culture of leadership amongst team members… a culture that appreciates face to face communication (as opposed to confining yourself in silos) and a culture that does not believe in the word ‘rework’, instead all work is considered ‘new work’. I’ll elaborate on this last bit in my future posts.
So to put it in a nutshell, if your commonsense dictates you document your work, document it. If your common sense says it is absolutely imperative to plan each and every detail of the project day 1, do it. But doing so would have both pros and cons. Right now I’ll just leave you with the idea of how receptive Agile is to change and more importantly receptive to ‘whatever works for you‘.
Some food for thought… Bon appétit 
