Clamberry Blog

Reflections on a career in software development (and, maybe, other sun-dried thoughts)

Agile or Crazy? Sometimes Both

Composed, Spring, 2012

I recently started at a new software development position with a relatively small company. I found myself and another brand new developer responsible for a feature that was needed “yesterday”. A short while later, we had a fairly solid initial implementation of the feature that could, respectably, be included in the next product release; at least in the agile sense, of a “minimally viable product”.

3 factors contributed to our ability to get this done:

  1. Weekly reviews with the product stake-holders

  2. Required code reviews that forced some of the “veteran” developers to review what we were doing

  3. A laser focus on the separation of UI and service/DB layer to support the required use cases

Sure, it was more of a marathon than a sprint. And, sure, the effort intensity may not have been “ideal”. But sometimes, in the real world, that is OK. The keys to making it work were:

  1. Product management recognition of the realities

  2. Acceptance that this should not be “the norm”

  3. A truly collaborative team effort

  4. Finally, recognition that this initial feature set was just that – initial. Real value would still need to be layered on top of the base we provided.


I’m looking forward to the next, hopefully more thoughtfully planned, set of features.