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The group I am in has been tasked with becoming "more agile." The manager, great guy, but is hardware oriented. Any recommendations for something that would support a gentle introduction to agile project management?
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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"Imagine developing a hardware-chip, but with the customers changing the spec every day".
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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I never understood the concept of Agile (big A) Project Management - makes no sense. Agile is based on the Agile Manifesto Manifesto for Agile Software Development. It (Big A) is specifically about software. Take the manifesto and principles, and replace every "software" with "project". Does it make any sense? Project Management is much about planning, formal agreements, estimating, tracking, etc. It less about executing the plan, though many non-PM's think that is all PM is. Tell a real PM that you want him to run a project, but skip the formal processes and documentation, don't bother formalizing an agreement with the customer, and while you're at it, don't bother with a plan. See what they have to say.
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I know what you mean. In practice though, software developers are frequently trying to do Agile in an organisation that still has a very project-oriented mindset. So, unless you're lucky enough to work somewhere where the entire organisation has an Agile mind-set, there are going to have to be compromises, and a good PM who understands Agile can be very helpful to bridge the gap.
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JIRA is for feeble minded retarded manager.
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tell us how you really feel 
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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Agile + JIRA + storyboard => Bollywood Manager.
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CollabNet VersionOne[^]
Caveat Emptor.
"Progress doesn't come from early risers – progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things." Lazarus Long
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We use Rally which while not brilliant serves its purpose for everyone from the department heads to the developers and testers.
There are a lot of difference denominations of the Agile religion - and it is a religion from what I have experienced of it. So you are also going to need to decide on how far into it you want to go, heck they even use the word 'ceremony' to describe a small group of slightly scruffy men standing up to talk about what their plans are for the day.
There are also plenty of courses that will take your money to train you on the Agile religion.
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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Everywhere I work these days does agile. Use JIRA and have a meeting each morning and you're agile.
Right?
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Agile by itself is for feeble minded manager, who has less confidence for what he do and can do. At the end, the manager present the story board to cheat others while presenting the project. The interesting, part for a simple "click event" application features addition, you will 30-40 pages of story board, which has nothing to do with the application features.
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Sumuj John wrote: Agile by itself is for feeble minded manager
Then you're doing it wrong.
Everyone is born right handed. Only the strongest overcome it.
Fight for left-handed rights and hand equality.
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Quote: you're doing it wrong
We Nah. It proves to us more "How I manager the person" than "How I manage the work and product".Those who evangelist Agile, we let them to work in fitness companies such as LA, Planet fitness. We also give them our wishes and recommendation.
No more toleration for Daily standup, Lean Manifestation ...
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charlieg wrote: The manager, great guy, but is hardware oriented.
Agile for hardware oriented managers:
- Etch project requirements onto a piece of glass.
- Smash glass with hammer.
- Distribute broken pieces to team.
- If a requirement is split across several shards, create an ad-hoc sub-team for that requirement.
- Large pieces are an indication that further analysis is required. Repeat from step 1.
Latest Article - A Concise Overview of Threads
Learning to code with python is like learning to swim with those little arm floaties. It gives you undeserved confidence and will eventually drown you. - DangerBunny
Artificial intelligence is the only remedy for natural stupidity. - CDP1802
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Hey, easy on the guy and us, we're all learning.
The group I work with is like herding cats. You better bring some fish.
I actually think it might help us a bit - forcing us to document our pivots and what not due to decisions made by management outside the group. Well, it might and I have been called too trusting in the past. Funny thing is that it's outside management driving the "let's do agile" approach.
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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If you find this solution, I'd love to learn it, too.
My problem with Agile is that it is a simple concept: get a piece of work done and make sure the user likes it before doing too much that needs to be changed. The very core of the concept hates processes and procedures, yet every discussion of how to do Agile results in a war, every time, about which processes and procedures to use to accomplish it. Quite enigmatic!
My Agile experiences are that more time is spent meeting, planning, talking and dreaming than is actually spent DOING anything! I suspect others are coping better at this, but then again, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Anyway you look at it though, it is JUST grass.
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FWIW, here is my view on agile. I am sure to get disagreement, especially from the purists, but that is OK.
Agile Principles
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Skip the entire Agile thing since so much of it is nonsense in any event.
Your best bet would be to pick up a copy of Stephen MccConnell's, "Rapid Application Development", which to this day is a bible of the development world. It has everything you need to develop budget conscious and timeline oriented development techniques.
The only drawback is that it describes the old way of doing Function Point Analysis so you will have to get McConnell's more recent book on the subject, which describes modern techniques on project estimation.
Stephen McConnell is one of the leading software engineering analysts in the United States. If you go to his site at Construx Software, you will note that everything is termed around Agile concepts. However, they are really software engineering concepts wrapped in an Agile wrapper. I corresponded with Stephen a few years ago on the matter and he told me that if he used software engineering terms, no one would buy into it. As a result, he simply shows software engineering in a way that Agile mindsets can understand.
The books are the core of quality software engineering. If you supervisor cannot understand the concepts, he definitely won't understand Agile except for the fact that it will allow you to work faster, which is about the only thing technical management wants to hear these days...
Steve Naidamast
Sr. Software Engineer
Black Falcon Software, Inc.
blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com
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The varied responses you have received so far, confirms for me what I have always believed. No on knows what "Agile" is or how to implement it. It is like trying to tackle fog. 
It seems to me to be a manifesto designed to relieve the project manager, and members of all responsibility for their actions and inactions, inevitably leading to finger pointing and failure in most cases and success buy pure chance. 
Project groups need all members from the top down to:
accept and embrace personal responsibility,
cooperate with, and help, each other,
go into the project knowing that requirements will change,
and be ready to put on their big boy pants and not whine about it.
Never trust a dog with red eyebrows - Terry Pratchett (RIP)
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I think in many respects it comes back to the Extreme Programming book I read long ago. There were two nuggets I pulled from that book. The first was "The customer does not know what they want until they see it." This tosses waterfall development on it's head and more importantly declares the fact that no one wants to admit.
Second was you have 3 choices, pick two. It should be in every meeting room. Rules... any system should document when violating the pick two rule.
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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Your reply certainly agrees with my 40+ years of experience. 
I don't know anymore. I just don't. Get me some coffee and I might be able to figure it out...
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All - I appreciate all the feedback, salty any otherwise. Been in the business long enough to have some thick skin.
Living in a Dilbert world
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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Don't take on anything that you can't "complete" within 2 weeks (i.e. have "something" to show for).
Anything longer, and it says you're out of control.
"(I) am amazed to see myself here rather than there ... now rather than then".
― Blaise Pascal
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