Saturday 11 June 2011

Agile teams need the same skills

There is occasionally anxiety about how project managers, business analysts, QAs and other traditional roles fit into agile projects. A project manager new to agile development might feel that their skills and experience aren't valued because they don't see their old job title explicitly mentioned in a description of an agile team.

Agile schedules still need to be managed. Agile requirements still need to be analysed. Agile codebases still need to be tested. The difference is that agile teams don't assume that these activities have to be done by dedicated team members.

A cross-functional team needs a wide variety of skills to succeed. Sometimes these will be provided by specialists and sometimes by generalists. The balance has to be struck for the specific needs of a project and can't be determined by a crude, one-fits-all rule.

Though agile is a great step forward in software development, it would be arrogant and unfair to think that there is no place in agile teams for software professionals that happen to come from traditionally structured organisations.

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