Re: agility programming and DBA's?

LOL. It's the latest fad in management. Management loves it because they can be all "trendy" without really having to do the hard work of management.

Basically it's a series of 2 to 3 day "products", granularized down to 1 to 8 hour "tasks" that are planned on a monthly basis. You report daily on what tasks you completed yesterday, what tasks you plan to complete today, and what is keeping you from completing your tasks.

It may sound pretty bad but actually it's very good for tackling huge amounts of well defined work. Just dig in and grind away and management is very happy over all the tasks that are being completed and products delivered.

But it's an absolute horror when there's no pre-planning done or when you're trying to discover requirements or any other long term activity that can't be finished in 2 or 3 days. Everybody can see the train-wreck coming, everybody agrees that something needs to be done, but no one can quite figure out how to do it without violating the rules for agile management.

So it depends on what sort of work you're looking at. Personally, I believe that it's a useful tool when used in the right circumstances.=20 But if the circumstances change then I'd switch to a different tool.

I doubt if your ensign-manager will have the confidence, experience, or training to switch management methods as required.

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