Learning is not a spectator sport

A friend was recently describing Agile to me…I stress, not Agile the principle, but Agile the way its been implemented at their site…I thought I’d share it with you 🙂

[warning: profanity]

“A few years back I was struggling financially, but I needed a broom.  So I went down to the shop and got the cheapest broom I could find.  It was two dollars.  A week later it broke, the head snapped completely off.  So I glued the head back on and kept using it.  Then it broke off again.  So I drilled a nail in the shaft, and glued it again.  But it kept breaking in new and unforeseen ways.  Eventually it dawned on me…Spend some money and buy a decent f..king broom……That is how we do agile where I work – we spend as little money as possible on the cheapest, crappiest thing we can find that we can call a ‘broom’, and we call it ‘agile’.  If I want to sweep the f..king floor, why wont someone spend some money on a decent broom?”

And my friend is right…Agile is not about doing half the job for half the money