My Road to Agile

For those of you without the patience to read yesterday's long post, here is the abridged version. My route to agile wasn't overnight.

Fist exposure to an automated regression test suite in '89 (with the IBM 3174 Communications Controller).
Many years of coding and laboriously testing stuff by hand.
Wanted to try my hand at management in '96.
Project managed wrongly what could have been a nice agile project.
Felt ignorant.
Started studying.
Went back to programming.
Fell into an XP project in '99.
Fell in love with XP.
Studied it.
Tried to spread it.
Practiced it on a number of projects.
Wrote about it.
Spoke about it.
Disappointed people didn't flock to it.
Wanted to try my hand at managing in an agile fashion in '05.
Did much better.
Wanted to practice it on more projects, so became a coach for hire.

The moral of the story:
Consider all that led up to you buying in. Then guide and encourage those you work with, but give people space to find their own road to agile. Have patience with those you coach.

photo credit: Tomasz Wiech