Agile ... in 1976

I'm aging myself here, whatever.

We talk about Agile as if it's a new idea, the fact of the matter is that the principles have been around for a long time. A little story is order.

It was my first job in IT, a great opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a new industry and I wanted to make the best of it. I had put in a lot of time as a operator (we had those then), did a few small programming assignments from time to time and now my time had arrived, I was asked to do a full system, an A/P rewrite. Unfortunately I also had to do my operations job so I went about it the best way I knew how. I took an incremental approach to requirement collection (call it a scrum backlog list), I did a number of small increments (call it a sprint) and I did it  quickly, in like 30 days.

So what allowed me to get it done so quickly. Well I have to admit that I was too young and too naive to understand what I was doing, but it clearly worked. I simply did what came naturally. I asked about requirements as they came up, I incrementally programmed the system and I adjusted on the fly.

What does this tell us about Agile? I think it's pretty simple and straight forward. It's the natural way of things.

What's it mean ?

Behind the ropes.

What does it mean, and why do you want read it.

Those are the existential questions that require answering. This blog targeted to those of you in the enterprise software business and  it's various offshoots. I am a consultant to chief information officers and believe that my various jobs, contracts and experiences demonstrate that I have truly "behind ropes experience" in the enterprise software world.

I have been a CIO.  I have managed application development for a large enterprise.  I have been a Professional Service Executive working for a software company. I have been a Professional Service Executive working for a service provider. In short I've been around the  block so to speak.

I'll share my thoughts on the industry and it's workings. I'll share you with you the winning and losing strategies used by the various players in the industry as well as how to take advantage of them.

In short, a "Behind the ropes" vantage point

Tom Minick