Agile anti-patterns are everywhere. Even most organizations exhibiting a high degree of agile competency often have a few anti-patterns. In their case they have usually determined it is too costly to remove the anti-pattern meaning they just deal with it as necessary. Most other organizations haven’t made that determination and in many cases they don’t know how much of a problem the anti-pattern is causing them. After seeing this at many locations throughout the US and in organizations at various levels of agile maturity, we have decided to do something about it.

 

Agile Bob has increased his blogging frequency (see Agile Bob says article below for details), and one of the things he will be blogging about is agile anti-patterns. You can see the list of blog posts at www.agileforall.com/blog/category/agile/antipattern. If you poke around you will also see another series with "New to agile" in their titles. This is an attempt to help people as they ramp up their agile efforts. You can look for category "Newbie" and find all the posts.

 

Now on to a subject we have heard a lot about in the news lately – BAILOUTS! We've decided to start our own economic stimulus package and to also help bailout some companies along the way. Obviously we believe very strongly in use of an agile process to accelerate cash flow, increase delivered business value, increase quality and ultimately make organizations better able to meet the needs of their customers. Unfortunately, in today's economic climate many companies are looking to reduce costs. The most substantial cost for many companies is payroll. We've seen the devastating effect of layoffs and we want to help avoid them. We believe there is another way to "right-size" a company and that is by growing revenue through effective use of employee skills. If your company is considering using an agile approach to help them weather the current economic storm, or if you know of another company looking to do so, please let us know. Anyone mentioning this article will receive 20% off all services we deliver. But that's not the best part – the best part is that we can show a one year 100+% return on investment (ROI) for the costs associated with an agile transition. We can also show how using an agile process for projects can create a 500+% higher return on dollars invested in development. Email http://mailto:info@agileforall.com for details on how to receive more information.

This month I'm writing to tell you about an exciting development you may not know about yet. I have made the commitment to post blog entries more often. As a result there have been 9 entries since the last newsletter was sent out in February. While I think all of them were interesting, some received significantly more views than others. For example, a post called "New to Agile: Beware of the elephant in the room" received more than twice as many page views as any other blog entry. The post "Never have a PMP on an agile team" also received significant views and several great comments. Go to the blog at www.agileforall.com/blog or www.agilebob.com (they both go to the same place, but I wanted to give you one that was easier to remember).

 

Let me point out something many of you also may not know. Did you realize that you can get blog postings in your email if you use Microsoft Outlook (and I’m sure many other email programs)? This is done using an RSS (real simple syndication) feed. You can sign up for the feed when you are on any blog page by clicking the orange icon on the page, or the orange icon in your browser. I’ve personally come to love having RSS feeds delivered to my email. It allows me to get the messages and peruse them at my leisure without having to remember to go to each blog a few times per month.

 

Along with trying to blog more often, I've been trying to get more online exposure in general. My blog is now listed in the Agile category at Alltop.com (http://agile.alltop.com). I’m also tweeting on Twitter these days. Follow me at www.twitter.com/AgileForAll.