When I moved from a waterfall to an Agile environment it was a whole company decision. We contracted in some developers to help us learn about agile and how to adapt our practices to be more Agile. It’s only with hindsight that I realise how fortunate I was to get that experience.
Just yesterday on testers chat someone was advised to adopt some Agile practices (good advice given the issue they were having). But they hadn’t had exposure to the agile manifesto.
When I thought about it after it really got me wondering how we can help people in these situations. There are more than we imagine I believe. If your company isn’t on board with Agile or doesn’t want to work that way for whatever reason, how can you get experience or an understanding of Agile from 0?
It’s not easy to just change jobs to an Agile environment either. Many job specs say “previous experience in an agile environment is required”. This can be a blocker to changing jobs. Of course we can argue that companies worth working for won’t have it as a requirement but that, I feel, is for a different thread.
How can we help people with 0 experience of Agile prepare for such an environment?