Agile Followers and Agile Derivers

Dave Churchville describes the split in the agile community between "followers" and "derivers". Followers adopt all the rules and best practices that they hear about. Derivers consider the basic principles of rapid feedback, inspection and adaptation, and select practices accordingly.

I agree with Dave that the principles of agile are more important than the practices, and you should consider your environment when selecting which practices to apply. You should also update your practices regularly. Agile should have adaptable practices as well as tasks.

I would suggest the following four factors are triggers that the process should be reassessed and possibly adapted :-

Changing People

Have the personnel on the project changed. What are their personal goals, and does the methodology match these goals?

Changing Technologies

Has the project moved to a stage where it uses different technologies? – if so, which agile methods are most appropriate for these? Practices that are suitable for developing web pages in ASP.NET might be different to practices for developing applications to connect to a legacy mainframe system.

Changing Customers

Have the customers on the project changed. Are they still happy to work with developers?

Changing Environment

Has the political or legal environment changed?