In my previous job we practiced agile by having sprint meetings every day. However the business was run more with a waterfall approach. We called it Agile but it didn’t use any of the typical tools you find in agile training. There were no user stories, burndown charts, agile board or component testing done.
You see my previous job was in the highly regulated medical technology sector. Everything had to be documented to the tee before any single line of code was written.
Warning boring government regulation snippet follows. Brace yourself !
| Sec. 820.30 Design controls. |
| (a) General. (1) Each manufacturer of any class III or class II device, and the class I devices listed in paragraph (a)(2) of this section, shall establish and maintain procedures to control the design of the device in order to ensure that specified design requirements are met.(2) The following class I devices are subject to design controls:(i) Devices automated with computer software; and(ii) The devices listed in the following chart.SectionDevice868.6810Catheter, Tracheobronchial Suction.878.4460Glove, Surgeon’s.880.6760Restraint, Protective.892.5650System, Applicator, Radionuclide, Manual.892.5740Source, Radionuclide Teletherapy. |
This regulation in particular made it very hard do Agile in an Agile way. We had specification phases that took 6 months. Software releases were released only once a year. Testing required extensive documentation and a multiple person signoff before a single test was done.
So I did not truly understand what agile was. I heard of user stories from my buddy in the web sector but I didn’t really understand it. So what is a user story anyway?
User Stories
a user story is an informal, natural language description of one or more features of a software system. User stories are often written from the perspective of an end user or user of a system. -Wikipedia.
I wanted to know agile inside and out. Little did I know I was already practicing Agile with my EmbroideryWare business. At the beginning I was releasing new full tested versions about every two weeks. My customers loved it. They would ask for a feature and the software would have it very quickly. They were delighted. So when I start my training all this Agile felt familiar to me.
My Agile Training
So yet another course had to be taken. Again udemy to the rescue with The Agile Samurai Bootcamp.
Note: Udemy is not the only online education you can take. There are many other options. I just have had a good experience with the udemy courses. I guess they fit my learning style.
I found that Agile training is not that complicated. So I could watch the course at my own pace. I did not have to sit in front a computer and take notes. Instead I watched a lot of the course while I was at the beach. Luckily I had unlimited streaming on my phone! Now watching the course was just a start. The course inspired me to come up with an agile planning app.
