Agile Philosophy for Startups
At the Startup Lessons Learned Conference on April 23 Kent Beck presented the 'Build' Keynote on Beyond Agile Programming. In addition to using a great analogy between startups and goats, he presented a compelling enhancment to the agile manifesto as applied to startups.
(In each set of bullets the first bullet is pre Agile, the second is the statement from the Agile manifesto, and the third bullet is beyond Agile for startups)
- Processes and Tools
- Individuals and Interactions
- Team Vision and Disipline
A startup needs optimize for the team over the individual
- Comprehensive Documentation
- Working Software
- Validated Learning
A startup needs to begin with the need and work backwards towards the software
- Contract Negotiations
- Customer Collaboration
- Customer Discovery
A startup needs to discover/find who your customers are before you can collaborate with them
- Follow the Plan
- Responding to Change
- Initiate Change
A startup doesn't have change, so before you can respond to change you need to initiate change
Subtle but important.
