Agile thoughts at 37,000 feet

I don’t mind travel except for the part where you aren’t home! I especially hate traveling through Chicago’s O’Hare airport. Yet here I am at 37,000 feet on my way for a connection via O’Hare. Maybe I’ll get lucky this time and my connecting flight will be on time. Fortunately, I was agile about my plans and didn’t put myself on the last flight of the day to get to Boston.

Why am I writing about this? Because it made me realize that subconsciously I was using some good agile philosophy when making my travel plans. During training I tell teams to always, always, always (add 17 more always here to make it clear) identify risks and impediments early AND communicate them to someone that can do something about them. Doing so will give your team the maximum amount of time to mitigate the risk or remove the impediment. Never get caught in the situation where you knew of a risk and didn’t tell someone. That leads to the sad quote “I should have told you so.” Ugh, how awful will that be if your project is a failure!

Remember, it is up to ALL members of agile teams to constantly identify potential risks and impediments and properly communicate them.