The Agile Narratives project gathers personal stories relevant to Agile software development. Anyone can search the database or contribute stories about their own experiences. You can use Agile Narratives to build case studies, research Agile methods adoption, discover new organizational patterns and learn from the successes and mistakes of others.
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Introduction
This is our first mailing since the new website was set up, so we have quite a bit of news to report….
Initial interviews
Last year the Agile Alliance generously provided $1000 towards the cost of performing and transcribing interviews for the website. This work was undertaken by Johanna Hunt of University of Sussex, UK.
The XTC network was used to find interested volunteers who were able and willing to donate their time to this project. The gathering exercise was conducted between June and July 2006. The development of the indexing questions, and the follow-up indexing sessions were conducted in August and September. In total three practitioners were interviewed, initially for a period which varied between 50 minutes and 2 hours depending on interviewee. The interview was then transcribed and edited down into stories. The participants then agreed to meet with Johanna for a follow-on indexing session, which took between 1 and 2 hours each. We’d like to thank all the interviewees for devoting so much time and effort to the project.
The full indexing process resulted in 23 fully edited stories (and one joke), and a complete set of 26 indexing questions which were developed in conjunction with interviewees. Originally we had only expected to be able to interview, transcribe and index the results of two such interviews, but managed to conduct three (one of which was extended) within the budget allotted. This process was expected to gather the seed stories for the database, and has proved successful.
Database available online
The database is now available online, replacing the original wiki. We invite you to interact with the database and send any feedback you may have.
Do you have a story to tell?
Matt Jones joins as programmer
The Drupal content management system set up by Duncan Pierce to run the Agile Narratives site provides a lot of functionality “out of the box” but leaves a few rough edges. Johanna has arranged for the University of Sussex to allocate a final-year undergraduate student, Matt Jones, to programming work in support of the project, and Duncan has been coaching him in PHP programming and the use of the Drupal content management system the Agile Narratives site is based on.
Matt is working through the issues identified in our roadmap, and we hope to roll out new features to the site as they are tested.
Promotion at XPDay London
To further facilitate the promotion of the Agile Narratives project a professional UK-based designer (Matthew Balaam) volunteered his time to design the poster, flyers, etc. for the Agile Narratives group as well as helping with designing the image and feel of the website. The poster and flyers produced by Matthew and Johanna were used at XPDay London in November to promote the program and website and reproduction costs were sponsored by the Extreme Tuesday Club.
Agile Practice Patterns
Amr Elssamadisy has created a program to study patterns in agile practice and adoption - Agile Practice Patterns. We’re exciting about the relationship between his work and Agile Narratives, and we hope to provide a platform for building strong links between narratives and patterns.
Johanna Hunt joins as co-director
Johanna’s contribution to the project has been immeasurable (finding interviewees, interviewing them, developing indexing questions, attending conferences, providing promotional material and T shirts, writing reports—the list seems endless), and in addition to thanking her, we’d like to welcome her as a co-director of the Agile Narratives programme.
Best regards, Duncan Pierce
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