A [sorta] brief introduction to how I got here

In 1999 I started working in a small start-up software company. We were agile without knowing it. The salesman/CEO would show our product to a prospective client. They would ask if it did X and he would say “It doesn't now but it will tomorrow!” and hang up the phone. He would rush into the next room to the development/training/support/marketing department (which consisted of me and two other guys) to tell us what the new client needed and we would make it so in very short order.

Fast forward a handful of years and we grew up pretty fast. We hired people with “experience” to make us a better company. We hired a VP who in turn hired developers with more experience in making software and as a result, we formalized many of our processes. I became a business analyst (which is still my job title today) and we began to write formal specifications. As I look back, the amount of writing that took place before the start of a project is a little depressing! Our experienced developers made sure that we analysts told them every detail that they needed to know including how the page should be laid out, where the new pieces resided in the navigational scheme, the content, even colors.

Despite all of this, we were successful beyond our dreams. We snared 30%, 40%, eventually 50% of our potential market. We celebrated our wins, all the while, wondering how we could improve efficiency. Stop writing about things we never did. Stop spending man-months doing work that was, in the end, not ever looked at again.

A few more years into this journey and my fellow analyst attended a conference and heard about Agile Development. He brought the idea back to the office and the VP and experienced developers called him a heretic. He didn't know the first thing about how software should be done because his only experience was at this start-up company, not out in the real world.

More years passed, the VP retired, we pushed harder to move to Agile and we were given the go-ahead. We were a dedicated Microsoft shop. Because of this, our transition to Agile was coupled with a transition to TFS as our source control and requirements housing platform. The problems with this approach became apparent to me almost immediately. As we because self-taught and watched all of Mike Cohen's web casts and read all of his writings, I was convinced that an analog solution that we could mold to our evolving process was the way to go instead of using the monolithic trappings of TFS to force us to work in a predetermined pattern. I was ridiculed by the company tech-heads for not wanting to use software in a software company. TFS won out.

Here we are in 2013. We have again restructured with new leadership and new ideas in place. I had little to do with the new round of leadership coming into place, however, they coincidentally(?) align much more closely to what I envision an agile shop to look like. We have designers who design our user experience - crazy! We have an analog work tracking system that works differently for each team (I have dubbed this our 'Information Super-Hallway'). The end of our sprints are a celebration of what we've done over the last three weeks. We break down our work for each sprint collaboratively. Things are coming along nicely.

I want to talk more about how to get to the better place and I hope you'll stay with me for a while and let me know what you think and what you want and what you have to offer.

Ciao!