The first value statement in the Agile Manifesto is “Individuals and interactions over processes and tools”. Mike McLaughlin, of Version One, questions the role and influence the growing agile tool set has on individuals and interactions. McLaughlin states that the capability of Agile based software tools adds scalability and efficiencies, but that this does not remove the need for team members to interact with each other. His point is that we need to stick to the original intent of the manifesto language. Focus on the interactions, not the process.
It pulls like gravity.
It is human nature to gravitate toward stricter process and away from individuals and interactions. Organizations want to be lean to contain costs. Organizations want processes to provide consistent and efficient deliverables. These forces pull organizations toward larger processes and push employees away from the importance of the human interaction.
In my experience, the downside of a process is that it tends to become the goal of many who follow it. I’ve seen employees feel like they have accomplished their goal simply because they followed the 10 step process and populated the fields on a form. Usually when people reach this point they stop thinking about the people and interactions on the other side of the process.
Recently, a co-worker shared with me that she went to an in-network doctor for a procedure. The doctor chose to use a second medical provider for a part of the medical services. When the insurance company received the claim, they said the second medical provider was out of network, so the insurance company charged a different amount for their services. They penalized the insured as if it was the choice of the insured as to what secondary service the primary doctor chose to use. The process in this case missed the mark of the original intent. But it took over one year of appeals to get a reversal of course from the insurance policy.
A user story.
I recently wrote a project charter to frame-up an upcoming project. I chose a traditional project charter template because the original request for the project work was vague enough that it included a large number of possible outcomes. So I wanted a document format that could aid me with getting clarification for the project goals and better define the boundaries of the project project. To compile the charter I had to interview several business stakeholders to learn about program rules, pricing rules, and system constraints.
I used the project charter as a basis to then move into agile user stories. Now, I’ll be honest. I have not used the agile user story approach previously for requirements gathering. I have created use-cases in the past and user story follows a similar type of approach. But true to the agile manifesto, the user stories put less emphasis on a grand template and more emphasis on a conversation. I like the user story approach because it is setup to get requirement information from a project stakeholder through the use of everyday language. “As a , I want , so that . This type of approach encourages user interaction. It encourages natural dialogue to document requirements.
The result of interactions.
At the end of the user stories, I had a document that showed how the people involved in the project would interact and use a system and what they expected to get from it. To get there I had to interview and interact. Dare I say that’s a good process to follow for software development? 😉
But seriously, I think it steers discussion towards the benefits of the project work and away from the fields in a form. There is a structure to the user story template. But the structure is almost invisible because it adheres to natural language. I wasn’t even aware of the form structure while I conversed with the business stakeholder to gather input. At the end of our discussion, I had a user story. I had an artifact that could be used to begin design and coding. I had experienced the value of the first value statement in the Agile Manifesto.
User Story and Acceptance Criteria