Agile Famous Quotes

Malcolm Gladwell puts the "pop" in pop psychology, and although revered in lay circles, is roundly dismissed by experts - even by the researchers he makes famous.

Silicon Valley is famous for mantras like “move fast and break things” and implementing them through strategies like “minimum viable product” (MVP). These types of agile strategies can only work if you have the option to quit. You can’t put out an MVP unless you have the ability to pull it back. The whole point is to get information quickly, so you can quit the stuff that isn’t working and stick with the things that are worthwhile or develop new things that might work even better.

And so, when I tell stories today about digital transformation and organizational agility and customer centricity, I use a vocabulary that is very consistent and very refined. It is one of the tools I have available to tell my story effectively. I talk about assumptions. I talk about hypotheses. I talk about outcomes as a measure of customer success. I talk about outcomes as a measurable change in customer behavior. I talk about outcomes over outputs, experimentation, continuous learning, and ship, sense, and respond. The more you tell your story, the more you can refine your language into your trademark or brand—what you’re most known for. For example, baseball great Yogi Berra was famous for his Yogi-isms—sayings like “You can observe a lot by watching” and “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” It’s not just a hook or catchphrase, it helps tell the story as well. For Lean Startup, a best-selling book on corporate innovation written by Eric Ries, the words were “build,” “measure,” “learn.” Jeff Patton, a colleague of mine, uses the phrase “the differences that make a difference.” And he talks about bets as a way of testing confidence levels. He’ll ask, “What will you bet me that your idea is good? Will you bet me lunch? A day’s pay? Your 401(k)?” These words are not only their vocabulary. They are their brand. That’s one of the benefits of storytelling and telling those stories continuously. As you refine your language, the people who are beginning to pay attention to you start adopting that language, and then that becomes your thing.

Life aboard ship was like living in paradise for my agile friend and he could have continued this way forever if he hadn't discovered a splendid new game. When the stevedores were loading or discharging the ship, Peanut would hop onto the edge of the hatch and urinate down on them. Oh what great fun he had, never thinking that they would object to what he was doing. At first they would try to catch him but he was far too agile for them. Not that I understood what they were saying but I knew enough to know that the stevedores were shouting Bassa swearwords at him. Frustrated they would flip him the bird as they climbed down into the hold, foiled again. What a wonderful time Peanut had! His safest refuge was on top of the Wheel House, where the stevedores couldn’t go. Sometimes as a place of last resort he would dive through the open porthole into my state room. He didn’t like the Engine Room, as an alternate route to safety, since it was too hot and noisy. Besides the engineers didn’t much like a monkey messing with their things and who knows what trouble he could get into down there? Peanut, was wonderful entertainment when visitors came aboard. The Pan American flight attendants, they were called stewardesses back then, thought him adorable. I always had roasted peanuts for them to feed him, which he would pick and chew apart, littering the deck. The stewardess’s that came for my famous pizza parties always tried to pick him up and cuddle with him. Monkeys are unpredictable so I cautioned them to be careful but being such a cute little guy they seldom were. Ear rings were a favorite piece of jewelry to tug on, causing the ladies to scream. Most often he would let go but the wings above their pockets was another matter. Peanut would yank and pull on the insignia until it was his. I knew where he usually hid his loot and so could return their stuff but some of the stewardesses flew home without their wings.

astronomical fees, of course—any day now. Please don’t get sucked into that mess. In 1986, [Brooks] famously predicted that there were no silver bullets: that by 1996, no single technology or management technique would offer a tenfold increase in productivity, reliability, or simplicity. None did. Agile development isn’t a silver bullet, either. In fact, I don’t recommend adopting agile

Anyone contemplating it has to pass F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous test of a first-rate intelligence: “the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

In recent years, Eric Ries famously adapted Lean to solve the wicked problem of software startups: what if we build something nobody wants?[ 41] He advocates use of a minimum viable product (“ MVP”) as the hub of a Build-Measure-Learn loop that allows for the least expensive experiment. By selling an early version of a product or feature, we can get feedback from customers, not just about how it’s designed, but about what the market actually wants. Lean helps us find the goal. Figure 1-7. The Lean Model. Agile is a similar mindset that arose in response to frustration with the waterfall model in software development. Agilistas argue that while Big Design Up Front may be required in the contexts of manufacturing and construction where it’s costly if not impossible to make changes during or after execution, it makes no sense for software. Since requirements often change and code can be edited, the Agile Manifesto endorses flexibility. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools. Working software over comprehensive documentation. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation. Responding to change over following a plan.