I ran an "Agile Crash Course" for 10 managers last friday. They were all "between jobs" due to this horrible economy so they had spare time on their hands and most of them figured their was no harm in spending a day - free - learning about agile.
Early on in the day I asked everyone to imagine a continuum on the back wall with "already love agile" at one end and "very distrusting of agile" at the other, then I go them to point to where they'd place themselves. Not very scientific, but I find it useful. One person said they'd worked as a customer on an agile project and had enjoyed it even though it was a little awkward at times; one person said she knew so little that she had no opinion; the rest placed themselves in the distrusting half of the continuum.
The big questions during the day were:
(a) I use and like Prince 2. How's this work with Prince 2?
I'm not a prince 2 user so I couldn't answer but I suggested that we tackle this at the end of the day. The conclusion was Agile didn't conflict with prince 2. [That said, I imagine some Agile folk may claim that prince 2 conflicts with Agile.]
(b) How do you measure the cost of an agile project?
I thought I gave a fairly convincing answer to this (variable scope, fixed cost calculated to safely cover the vaiable-minimum product, a few good, honest conversations with the customer before the project starts) but I failed with at least two of them. That bothered me and I think (on reflection) that I should have asked the participants to figure the answer out (like I did with the prince 2 question) rather than giving an answer. I'll try that next time.
(c) Why are you so cynical about Agile?
I think Agile suffers from "feature fatigue" - it's too complex, too big, too confusing. Maybe I'm getting old, but I want something simple that I know will work, not something exciting. I up-played the "most of this isn't knew" and "prioritization is key" and "just do smaller projects would be a good start" and "figure out how you'll test something as-and-before, rather than after, you build it will save you a lot of work" angles. I down-played the "the first thing you must do is change the furniture around and hide half the computers" angles.
The end result is that when I asked them all to point to the continuum on the wall at the end of the day, all but 2 of the 10 had moved a good chunk towards the happier end of the scale.
I count that as a success ... but I wish I could have moved the other 2!
