Last week I’ve attended to the Rails Summit, first rails conference to be realized in Latin America (btw, excellent event :-) ), and one thing that attracted my attention was what Chad Fowler mentioned in his presentation (sorry Chad, if the words aren’t exactly the same):

Real experience is equal to change. For most persons, 9 years of experience mean 9 years doing things the same way, but experience should only count if you are continually improving the way you work.

This got my attention since I frequently see people trying to use agile methods as pre-made recipes, which you can apply without thinking, as in “my team uses Scrum, or XP, or FDD, etc..”.

It won’t be the first time I say this to someone, but the Agile Manifesto states:

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it.

So nobody should be afraid of changing the way he/she creates software, or adapting the agile practices to his/her context. The best way to develop software is the one that works for you. Change!

Cheers,

Francisco

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