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.
