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Kent Beck said the goal of agile software development is to heal the divide between the business and development, and he was right! The Bill of Rights - created by Kent, Ward Cunningham, Ron Jeffries, and others — defines complementary expectations: the customer’s rights and the builder’s rights. When both sides know their rights and honor the other’s, collaboration replaces conflict. The customer has the right to a plan, to see progress, and to change priorities. Builders have the right to know what’s needed, to produce quality work, and to ask for help. These aren’t rules, they’re agreements that create balance and trust. ...

Things move fast, if you stop learning, the product and the team will fall behind. Find ways to grow: When the company can afford look for suitable, high ROI courses, books, and conferences. And teach what you learn. Teaching cements knowledge and spreads it across the team. Make knowledge sharing part of the workflow so new people ramp quickly and everyone improves together. The “Whole Team” practice supports this type of thinking: continuous learning and teaching are core to a resilient, adaptive team. ...

I’ve joined teams that have a pervasive team culture of always saying “yes” when asked about the feasibility of the schedule, even when the real answer is “no”. As a professional, it’s our duty to say “no” when something can’t be done. We aren’t only hired to deliver, we’re also here to surface technical reality. As builders, we are the ones who know whether an approach is feasible or not, and if it can be completed within the allocated timeframe and budget; when it’s not, it’s vital that we speak up, even when under schedule pressure. ...

Sometimes the most honest estimate answer is “I don’t know.” That’s useful — but incomplete. Good estimates mix what you know and what you don’t. A common technique is to use relative comparisons (e.g. The estimate to build “Change Password” is about half of building “Login”), another technique is to use probability ranges (“between 5 to 15 days, most likely 12 days”). Both of these approaches can give managers, product owners, and stakeholders some meaningful information without pretending certainty. ...

Within a team if a player falls, the team needs to step up and cover the gap and keep the ball moving forward. When Bob gets sick, Jill steps in to finish Bob’s work. But this can only happen when Jill knows what Bob was doing and where to find his code. So we need to cross-train deliberately and make sure important knowledge isn’t siloed to just one or two people. And we need to encourage each team member to make it their responsibility to ensure other teammates can cover for them. ...