My Nimble world

So whats’s it like being Nimble, when you haven’t reached Agile?

Well, I guess everyone will have their own experience of this but here’s my experience so far. Card Walls have become scratch down charts. IPM’s are a distant memory and “fire fighting” is the phrase of the moment.

Our scratch down charts were almost entirely task based in order to break things down in order to keep the fast moving pace that is currently required of the team. But that really is the one and only advantage that this system allows – speed. It doesn’t ensure quality and doesn’t encourage buy-in from staff as they don’t necessarily even know what it is they’re working on or why! A very unsatisfactory situation that leads to job dissatisfaction and ultimately, if unchecked, a high turnover of staff. But this is my world and my reality and not one of my own creating.

But at what point do I take responsibilty for the situation my staff are working in? This is a question I try to ask myself regularly in order to attempt to understand how my team may be feeling about all this “to’ing and fro’ing” but in reality I have yet to decide that time is upon me. But one day I will have to make that decision and at that point I can longer pass the buck of “it’s not my fault” and will have to take it on the chin.

But what will make me finally decide that? Well, if I’m going to manage my staff properly, it will be at some point before my staff decide that it’s my responsibilty! Right now they can see that things are outside of my control and they are willing to accept my limitations with regard to resolving this. But as with every less than ideal situation, eventually it is just human nature to want to blame someone for problems facing us and not a faceless someone but someone you feel you can sink your teeth into given the opportunity! And if things haven’t resolved themselves by that point then I better have a backup plan to improve things elsewhere!

When being agile means that you’re not Agile

Time and time again recently in my desire to move towards us incorporating Agile methodology into the company I work for, I have to make compromises. Despite the best intentions, something crops up preventing the realisation of my goal and we end up not holding to Agile principles because we need to be flexible and roll with the punches… Or as a colleague said today “we aren’t Agile, but we are nimble”!

You see, the problems we face as we aim to introduce the Agile method to our development procedure is that we are constantly having to reassess our priorities due to contractual obligations that were promised without our agreement or consideration. And suddenly we are expected to head off the car crash that’s imminently set before us. As a result our resources are stretched to extremes and with immovable, contractual deadlines and feature lists, the only variables remaining are the process and code quality.

As you’d imagine neither of these are comfortable or popular decisions and yet I find I am having to be agile as I cannot be Agile!

Is it really fun leading the way in entertainment?

This is a question I have been faced with many times recently as the pressures of delivering time and time again under overly ambitious time scales and hugely under estimated budget constraints have begun to wear away at my usually steel like veneer.  And yet, despite almost 10 years working for the entertainment industry I find that I still wake up in the morning, wonder what’s going to hit me today and yet can’t think of any other industry I’d rather be working in.  In fact, I wonder if I’ll ever move to another industry at all!

Is it fun?  Absolutely not.  It’s tough.  Actually it’s really tough and the pressures faced seem impenetrable and the mountain tops seem insurmountable.  But that leads me to the next question of why do i do it.  Right now, I simply don’t know.  Some people think the answer is simple in that you feel close to the excitement of being near famous faces or because you can get free tickets to big events.  But in reality famous faces become very dull and free tickets to big events become so ordinary that suddenly a night at home just chilling in front of the tv seem rediculously inviting!  So what is it that pulls me in day after day?  Who knows.  Maybe the people, maybe the satisfaction of a job well done but neither of those explain why i continually feel a pull to this industry right now and maybe always will.

But this i do know, I learnt everything i know in various parts of this industry and I’m good at it.  I get it.  And i take pride in that.  So maybe I’m afriad I won’t succeed elsewhere?  Possibly.  But that doesn’t really fit in with my character in general.  I like being pushed outside of my ‘comfort zone’ so it seems that the question will continue being unanswered at least for now.