In this original presentation from the Communitech Agile Event, Jeff Patton, winner of the Agile Alliance’s 2007 Gordon Pask Award, explains why one needs to embrace uncertainty in order to succeed with his/her Agile project and how to avoid some of the common mistakes leading to project failure.
Watch: Embrace Uncertainty by Jeff Patton (1 hour)
After a quick introduction to Agile, Jeff presents some practices, what they actually mean and how they are supposed to be used, in an attempt to counteract the failure of Agile projects due to misconceptions and misunderstandings. One of the first misunderstood practices to address is iteration. Iterate is not increment, says Jeff. Increment requires having a complete idea about the final product, like in this image:
Iterate allows one to “build a rough version, validate it, then slowly build up quality”, as in the image below:
Jeff takes a stand against “possible shippable product at the end of an iteration” approach. He considers it frightening, freezing creativity and the positive development of a product.
Jeff quotes Fred Brooks, author of the article No Silver Bullet: Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering, developing his conception: “The hardest single part of building a software system is deciding precisely what to build.”
The conclusion of the presentation, accompanied by famous singers’ photos and song clips, is the recommendation to embrace uncertainty.