Over at Agile Alliance, there’s a great subway map that shows various aspects of Scrum, Lean, XP and others.
Using Extreme Programming (XP) as an example, if you pick a subway line and look at the titles of each “stop”, you may find you’ve heard of some of them – or you may already be doing them.
For instance, if someone at work or outside work asked if we were doing XP, I wouldn’t have an immediate answer, as I’ve not studied XP as a whole, nor have I committed each aspect to memory.
With the subway map, I can see a few things we’re doing, such as TDD, refactoring, a daily meeting and iterations (and these two are also in Scrum). Those aren’t the only things we’re doing.
It also highlights a couple of things that aren’t so familiar. What is “Sign up”?
Members of an Agile development team normally choose which tasks to work on, rather than being assigned work by a manager.
“Sign up for tasks“, Agile Alliance
OK, so I’ve come across that before, but not by that name.
I don’t know everything about Agile. I may know more of it than I think. When I went on a Certified Scrum Master (CSM) course, it gave me a complete picture and filled in some gaps, but quite a bit of it wasn’t new to me.
We can’t all know everything. We shouldn’t assume that “Are you doing XP?” is a simple question. For those who know XP inside out, they might be able to say Yes/No but would need to elaborate on some of the things they are doing well, could do better, have chosen not to do etc.
With Scrum, the CSM course gave me a good foundation that I can build on. I went on the course and I currently work as a Scrum Master. It doesn’t mean I’m immediately an expert in everything about Scrum. I’m learning more about it each week, learning the nuances and edge cases, and having very different experiences depending on the skill level of the team – both in terms of their technical experience, and how familiar they are with Agile. I’m getting things right, and I’m making mistakes.
I sometimes hear mentions of other parts of Agile but without much context. The subway map is a good reference point. I really value resources such as this.
