Card-Carrying Agile Team

Top row: Chris Freeman, George Sparks, Sudheer Pinna, Scott Splavec, Sreehari Mogallapalli, Matt Poush.
Bottom row: Toran Billups, Ryan Bergman, Andrea de Freitas, and Benoy John
Photographer: Vadim Suvorov

Say hello to the team from Sum Total. Back before acquisition, the company was known as GeoLearning, and Tim was one of the coaches to help with their transition to Agile methods. Later, while working on Agile In A Flash, Jeff and Tim were both employed as remote pair-programming team members. The team has done some remarkable things in just the past three years.

Vadim (an excellent developer, brilliant guy, friend) reminds me that he is present in this photo as a reflection in the eyes of all the developers who are standing in front of the camera. If this were a TV detective show, you could zoom in and see him clearly.

Card-Carrying Scrum Master

Dion Nicolaas (not pictured) displays the Agile in a Flash cards on his desk in the TomTom headquarters in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Showing a different card each day, he has inspired some colleagues to order their own decks!

Daily Meditations

On twitter, follow "buildndeploy" (Brian Kelly) for a daily meditation on Agile In A Flash. Well, mostly daily. He has a day job, and we certainly forgive a missed day. Brian is going through a card a day (when possible) and providing an 140char summary of his thoughts. Follow along by card number (use this index, or your own deck) and see what buildndeploy has to say.

Brian is using our hashtag #agileinaflash, so it is easy to catch up with his prior reflections.

Getting Better (guest blog post)

Today we have a short article from our guest blogger Johnno Nolan, who caught our attention in twitter when he said:

Great 2 hear the team talking soft dev. We go through an Agile in a Flash card every am and critique. Can feel devs caring again

Johnno Nolan's story is still in progress, but I felt that tweet was inspirational enough that I invited him to provide a short blog post, and he kindly submitted the following story.

I've worked here before. We developed with chaos. I left. They persuaded me to come back. They said it would be different. "We can do things a different way. Your way" they said. The chaos would be mine to tame. I accepted and returned.

The cold reality set in. The team was demotivated, resigned to the current system. Worse, we'd tried to implement 'Getting Better' before (I don't like to use the term Agile) but we'd lack courage and when the main change driver had gone, adoption fell by the wayside. There was mistrust, ignorance of doing things that way and then the team was asked to pick back up where they left off. So there's a been an open dialogue of what's been wrong and we've been focusing on the basics to 'Get Better'.

And we are.

I can look back a couple of months and we were not talking, not thinking, just accepting of the norm. Now we're learning together. Sometimes we have bad days, but today was a good one.

Before our stand-ups meetings we talk about one Agile In A Flash card. They say story cards are a placeholder for a conversation and that's exactly how we use them. We don't always agree with the card but we talk about it and try and understand. The cards provide a focal point.

Today was really productive, we finished more than we expected. We passed stories back because we didn't think they were good enough. We talked about design. We returned to the cards and talked more about process. For the first time in months we cared and we're proud of what we are doing.

We're not becoming Agile in a Flash but we're Getting Better Steadily.

Jeff and I are receiving several stories every week about how Agile In A Flash is helping teams re-engage with fundamentals. We'll be entertaining other guest bloggers in the future, in addition to providing some fresh content every month.

Card-Carrying Network Weaver

A welcome to Patrick Wilson-Welsh, seen enjoying his new deck of Agile In A Flash cards at the Agile And Beyond gathering in Dearborn, Michigan, where I dare say we had the most interesting table full of people in the entire room. Patrick really wanted these cards. Let us know how they're working out for you!

Card-carrying Agile Tester

This is Lisa Crispin, brilliant Agile tester and author, trainer, and early adopter of Agile In A Flash. Here you see her sharing deep testing insights with Jo, Edgar and Chester.

No animals were harmed or insulted in the making of this blog post.

Agile On A Desk

Dave Rooney, a card-carrying friend of Agile In A Flash, walked into a manager's office and what do you suppose he saw?

The astute observer will see all the cards are marked with either the compass rose ("The Plan" section) or else a waving pennant ("The Team" section). We intended those two sections to be especially interesting and useful for managers.

It does our hearts good to see Agile In A Flash in use. Your encouragement is always welcome here, in pictures, comments, tweets, purchases, or referrals!

Card-carrying Professional Scrum Developer Trainer

This is Andreas Ebbert-Karroum who is busy in Germany, leading codecentrics Agile Software Factory. He looks very happy to have his Agile In A Flash deck.

Card-carrying Team Effectiveness Amplifier

Say hello to George Dinwiddie. George is a well-known and well-respected software development coach and consultant, software blogger, and a Card-carrying Team Effectiveness Amplifier, and a friend of the Agile In A Flash effort (not to mention the authors).

Can you feel how the warmth of his personality radiates from this picture? Yeah, he's like that in person.

Restoring The Trust

Make sure you see Uncle Bob Martin's video Restoring The Trust, about the agile balance.  A certain deck of cards is prominently featured (thanks, Bob!) in the opening and closing moments.

There are a few other cards relating to balance, but clearly the Manifesto card is very close to Bob's heart,  as he is one of the original authors and signers of the both Craftsman and Agile manifestos.

Card-carrying Seer of System Dynamics

(in dramatic Black & White, no less!)

This is Esther Derby, a management consultant and Agilist who is helping companies to put a more human face on software development. We highly recommend her conference talks and blog. Here Esther has a brand-new deck of "Agile in a Flash" and a happy smile.