Available now on Amazon in both Kindle and Paperback formats

Back several years ago, I was happily trying to spread the importance of adaptive project management philosophies like Agile and Lean. I believed in them and I tried to share their concepts and nuances with anyone who would listen…Then two things happened.

First, my wonderful mentor asked me how, empirically, I could tell that the processes I had set up for my team were working. Was it the system, Agile, and methodology that worked or was it Axthelm and my influence and hard work that kept everything together? I didn’t have an answer.

Second, a co-worker lamented to me about his team not delivering as rapidly as expected even though they were also using Agile. Knowing the ticketing system they worked in (and my own struggles with it), I wondered if their problems were less a fault of Agile and more in other areas, like badly written tickets.

These forced me to step back from Agile and reassess what it meant to me. What if Agile didn’t actually matter and it was all down to the methodology and frameworks like Scrum or Kanban to fix? But then, those methodologies don’t cover everything a team needs to deal with either. Instead of shattering my worldview and starting over, I began rearranging pieces, categorizing team processes, researching how others solved various issues, and for everything asking the question: “Is That Agile?”

In this book is a compilation of topics for software development, testing, and system administration leads to review against their own team’s processes. I walk you through what I’ve seen, dealt with, and learned and give you things to try. Nothing is off limits as I dive into system architecture, writing tickets, ticket workflow, testing failures, crunches, bad employees, bad customers, office politics, documentation, blockers, and so many more.

If your team problems aren’t covered in the book, let me know and I will try to help figure it out. Because in the end, trying to figure it out and adapting to get the customer what they need is Agile.