I’ve been in the business of writing software since 2001 where I started out writing point-of-sale web applications for an insurance company. From there I moved on to working for software development companies working on products ranging from online banking to line of business applications. For a short period of time I even dabbled as an independent consultant.
The more products and projects I was a part of, I soon came to realize that sometimes the bureaucracy associated with a company and/or product inhibited a lot of the productivity and creativity and could lead to a less effective end result, both in terms of the product and the team morale. The year was 2005, and I decided there had to be a better way.
Over the last couple of years, I've played a large role in helping to change the way my place of employment goes about writing software. We've gone from an environment that was entrenched in the traditional waterfall methodology and have gradually moved to adopting agile methodologies. It has been a rewarding experience to see the productivity and quality gains that agile has brought to the development process and how an empowered, collaborative, cross functional team can bring about game-changing ideas and products. I'd like to share some of the experiences (good and bad) here in an effort to continue to spread the word and also as a means to selfishly solicit feedback from the community to improve our development processes moving forward.
