Dave Laribee

Regular project management is a full-contact sport, with pads.  With Agile, it's bare knuckles and no pads, an Ultimate Fight Club match pitting interia and corporate drag against people fighting to get things done.

Pingback from  Available Domain  » Blog Archive   » Die, Chicken. Die!

Shareholders might be considered the ultimate pig.  In fact, if it's a publicly traded company, they are pigs by law.

There are definitely folks whose input is valuable, but whose involvement in day-to-day activities would definitely become impediments.  There needs to be a line, that's what the product owner is for, but the characterization could be a little more refined.

Jimmy said it best - there is a line in the sand.  For me, the difference between pigs and chickens is the answer to this simple question - "Who gets fired first if the project fails".  If it is the CEO, then he is the biggest pig.  If it is the dev team, then they are the biggest pigs.

If chickens don't exist, then there are different sized pigs.

We just need to change the menu from ham & eggs to a turkey club. That way everyone's committed. Even the vegetables.

I would counter with the argument below, referenced entirely to standups alone.

In our organization we consider everyone directly involved with the project as "pigs."  This means users/customers, this means managers, and this definitely means development staff.

Now we have other people who could come to our standups.  We have Audit and Governance/Compliance that we invite to our standups.  They are "chickens" because they have roles in the project, but they are not directly involved in the success of the project.  Alot of times the Project Managers' roles shift between a "pig" and a "chicken" so they may have updates sometimes and not others.

I think this concept of chickens and pigs may have a better bearing in corporate development where there might be alot of fat on the chain than in software development companies (those that sell the product of IT's work).  Some call corporate development the technology dark side: www.techdarkside.com

I think the whole chicken/pig thing came about because a stand up can easily degrade into people bantering back and forth about features, timelines, stories, etc. that are beyond the scope of the stand-up. If you have people in the stand-up that can say "Lets talk about that after this" (or something to that effect) then I don't think you need a chicken/pig mentality. If you have people that can not keep focus than maybe this is necessary for your organization still.

Great stuff - I am not sure about calling everyone chickens or pigs!, but I couldn't agree with your point more.  So often I see in agile teams (or supposed agile teams) an over emphasis on certain practices.  This is likely a sign of immature agile teams.  The over-emphasis often leads to teams that really aren't agile at all (even thought they are using agile words to describe what they do).  

Interesting, my take on the C&P things (after reading Schwaber's book) is a little different.  Maybe this a case of something crossing over into the mainstream and losing its moorings. I understand your complaint to be that those labeled chickens are absolved from accountability. I understood it more along the lines of: pigs make commitments, and chickens can change the commitments for them. Pigs should still listen to chickens, and as soon as a chicken makes a commitment, whammo! they become a pig.

The deeper truth here is that sometimes a simple yet relevatory statement is commandeered by the hoardes, and misapplied without thought or discretion. Hmm... I'll be right back.

You've been kicked (a good thing) - Trackback from DotNetKicks.com