A New Language

As teams adopt Agile development methods, often a new sort of vernacular emerges. To those unfamiliar with Agile, it can sound quite foreign when these groups start rattling on about this or that. I thought it might be fun to list some of the phrases or activities that may have had an entirely different meaning before I went Agile.

Agile Terms Before We Were Agile

• XP was just the operating system running on my parents’ computer that I was constantly fixing.
• Scrum was something done on a muddy field by people much tougher than me.
• The term waterfall evoked beautiful memories of hikes in Hawaii instead of painful ones of past death marches.
• The idea of pairing with another co-worker was strictly forbidden by HR policies.
• Similarly, playing  poker in the conference room was generally frowned upon.
• The notion of sprinting for a week or more was insane.
• An epic story was something like Beowulf or the Iliad.
• Lean was my signature club dance move.
• The words burn and chart were never used in a positive sense.
• I wouldn’t have imagined sitting in a meeting with chickens and pigs.
• The word agile was the last word used to describe a group of software developers.

How about you?

For more information on Agile terms, visit the Agile glossary.