Post Agile Depression: Weaknesses, Impacts, and Effects When Implementing an Agile Development Model by Jonathan Cook

Author:Jonathan Cook [Cook, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-01-21T08:00:00+00:00

Post Agile Depression

As such, the most common adjustment is to resources.

However, this is more often than not, an utterly

misunderstood adjustment. Much like Pavlov's dog,

project planners/managers are conditioned to add

resources in the generally false believe that it will speed

up a project.

The ditch digger analogy illustrates this well.

The Ditch Digger Analogy

Consider the process of manually digging a 100 yard

ditch (for now, ignore how deep/wide it is or that it could

probably be completed with a machine). It will take one

The Author Recommends a New Way to Look at Teams. 35

Post Agile Depression

ditch digger one day to dig one yard of the ditch. Thus

one ditch digger can complete the ditch in 100 days. The

project planner mathematically assumes that five diggers

can complete the ditch in 20 days and ten diggers can

complete it in 10 days. Well, if that is the case then 100

diggers can complete it in one day and 200 diggers can

complete it by lunch!

However, what the project planner fails to realize is

the diminishing returns of too many ditch diggers. At

some point there will be so many ditch diggers that they

will beat themselves silly with so many swinging shovels

and so much flying dirt. The diggers get in the way of

each other and slow down the progress of the ditch. It is

an art, combined with logic that can best determine the

optimum number of ditch diggers.

Such is the art and logic of planning a software

development project. You just cannot add more resources

and expect mathematically increased project progress.

There will be too many hypothetical diggers, shovels and

loads of dirt. This is generally represented in cross-

36 The Author Recommends a New Way to Look at Teams.

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