Google's approach on Agile

Someone in the office forwarded me this link on Agile by Steve Yeye (Google Developer).

Some of interesting points on Google's approach to Agile:

- There are managers, sort of, but most of them code at least half-time, making them more like tech leads.

- Developers can switch teams and/or projects any time they want, no questions asked; just say the word and the movers will show up the next day to put you in your new office with your new team.

- Google has a philosophy of not ever telling developers what to work on, and they take it pretty seriously.

- Developers are strongly encouraged to spend 20% of their time (and I mean their M-F, 8-5 time, not weekends or personal time) working on whatever they want, as long as it's not their main project.

- There aren't very many meetings. I'd say an average developer attends perhaps 3 meetings a week, including their 1:1 with their lead.

- It's quiet. Engineers are quietly focused on their work, as individuals or sometimes in little groups or 2 to 5.

- There aren't Gantt charts or date-task-owner spreadsheets or any other visible project-management artifacts in evidence, not that I've ever seen.

- Even during the relatively rare crunch periods, people still go get lunch and dinner, which are (famously) always free and tasty, and they don't work insane hours unless they want to.

Read the entire article here.

I have recently started with the Agile way of development, mainly Scrum, and I must say its the most developer friendly way of approaching software development.

Also check out Control Chaos for heads up on Scrum.