Category Archives: Agile Humor

Agile Humor

Agile Humor – You Might Be a Project Manager If…

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If setting your alarm for 6:30 am means you’re “sleeping in”…you might be a project manager.

If the time it takes to microwave your Lean Pocket in the breakroom and the time it takes to eat it are coded to two separate job numbers…you might be a project manager.

If you’ve fallen asleep on a status call with the offshore team…you might be a project manager.

If your client team hates you for taking too long to bring the project in, and your dev team hates you for not giving them enough time to bring the same project in…you may be a project manager.

If you’ve called someone a “scope creep” or “legacy hugger” under your breath…you may be a project manager.

If you are too tired to celebrate at Dave and Buster’s after the app finally goes live…you may be a project manager.

Agile Humor

Agile Humor – The Cocktail Hour

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Signature drinks:

The Sprint

Grey Goose and dissolved Skittles, the only mixer available from the vending machine at 2 am.

Velocity Sour

Jack Daniels, club soda and lemon juice, already 3/4 finished.

Harvey Kanbanger

Smirnoff, Galliano, and orange juice with an orange Post-it garnish.

Scrum Punch

Bacardi Silver, Hawaiian Punch and frozen lemonade concentrate, drunk standing up at 8:30 am.

Lean Martini

It’s not necessary to know the full recipe up front.

Backlog Captain and Coke

Captain Morgan. That’s all. The Coke will be added in the next sprint.

Agile Humor

New Agile Jobs

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Code-Alones – Programmers who lack the people skills to be developers.

None-Of-Your-Business Analysts – Requirements gatherers for skunkworks projects.

Projectile Managers – Representatives of death march projects who must appear before angry stakeholders in the Marketing Conference Room.

Time Bandits – Scheduler/Physicists who bend the time-space continuum at the end of a sprint.

Pester Control – Analysts who intercept and gently steer away stakeholders who try to bother the development team with scope creep requests.

Agile Humor

Agile Humor – Multiple Choice

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Choose the most correct answer:

1. User Experience:
(a) is a distinct professional discipline focusing on how a product’s use is perceived and experienced by the people using it.
(b) finishes a sentence that begins “If I were a user I would want…”
(c) is that nice department of people on the third floor that we let decide whether the “Submit” button should be red or blue.
(d) means my experience. I’m a user too. You know, a really experienced one.

2. Code Complete:
(a) means all feature code for a sprint is written and documented, and ready for testing.
(b) is a cruel tease – it’s never, ever, EVER effin’ done.
(c) a prerequisite to all of us getting wasted at Dave and Busters.
(d) is the time when you discover what the words “welcome changing requirements, even late in development” mean to you.

3. Sprints:
(a) are a short time period, usually 2 to 4 weeks, during which portions of code deliverables are written, tested, and possibly pushed to production.
(b) run like mini marathons.
(c) are ten pounds of coding stuffed into a five pound bag.
(d) are given clever names to distract you from the fact you haven’t had a day off in two and a half weeks.

Answers: Aw, come on now…

Agile Humor

Agile Humor – Agile Drinking Game

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Great for attending business meetings remotely – access your GoToMeeting, grab a bottle of Stoli, then down a shot every time you hear:

FAIL FAST

WUDDAYA MEAN, FAIL?

EMPOWERMENT

NIMBLE

COLLABORATIVE

REQUIREMENTS

DONE

WUDDAYA MEAN, DONE?

MARKET-READY

RAPID PROTOTYPE

DEFINE RAPID.

FEATURES

BACKLOG

Just remember to cover any points YOU need to address in the meeting BEFORE your second shot of Stoli.

Agile Humor

Agile Humor – Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road? (2)

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MARKETING

We’ll recruit a representative chicken panel and probe their attitudes toward crossing the road.

SALES

Not my problem. I just have to convince the chicken to come to our side of the road, it’s up to customer service to keep her there.

CUSTOMER SERVICE

If we had a CRM system that truly met our needs, I would have known the chicken was disssatisfied, and presented her with a save offer.

CREDIT AND COLLECTIONS

The chicken didn’t give us 30 days written notice that she was going to cross the road, so she will still have to pay for the month of October.

PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

Too many chickens are migrating to the other side of the road. We need to create a new side of the road.

MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS

Our recommendation is to buy the other side of the road.

FINANCE

We can buy the other side of the road as long as we can close it and merge it with our existing side of the road operations.

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

Let’s get a consultant in here who’s knowledgeable about migratory chickens.

LEGAL

We can’t afford the liability. Effective immediately, all chickens are prohibited from crossing the road for any reason.

More Agile Humor – Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road (1)

A Marketer's Guide to Agile Development, Agile Humor

Agile Humor – More Words to Live By

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Buristic Review – An exercise to gain heuristic insight that will be rejected by a bureaucrat because the research didn’t come from his team.

Merital Raise – A merit-based pay increase for spending more time in the office cranking out code with your colleagues than at home with your spouse.

Rocked-It Shock – The horrifying realization after you totally rock a capabilities presentation that you now actually have to do all those things you just talked about.

Multi-BuryIt Testing – Variations that tested so poorly that you make the developer destroy all the code for it, then pull the backups and erase them too.

Prefictive Model – Advanced analytics that predict outcomes from innovative scenarios that haven’t a chance in hell of being approved.

Agile Humor

Agile Humor – Agile or Not Agile?

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DONALD TRUMP – Not agile. Look at him. His hair doesn’t meet anyone’s definition of done.

LADY GAGA – Agile. She wore a friggin’ meat dress, for chrissakes. Say what you want, the girl can iterate.

MARK ZUCKERBERG – Not agile. He was photographed wearing a suit. Standing next to a beautiful woman who’s almost certainly sleeping with him. He should just turn in his geek credentials and go buy a house next to Clooney.

NEWT GINGRICH – Not agile. He hasn’t learned to accept that when the sprint’s over, it’s over.

THE BOSTON RED SOX – Agile. David Ortiz said “Somebody gotta start it, right?…There are too many good players in the room not to have good team”. Results have improved ever since. Big Papi has a bright future in scrum management.

Agile Humor

Agile Humor – New Certifications

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The brilliant Peter Saddington, a/k/a AgileScout, posted a wickedly funny April 1st announcement of a Certified Agile Blogger course. Yep, April Fool! Read it, it’s great fun.

Since I blog about Agile from the point of view of the business stakeholders, it got me thinking about other certifications we could use in the Agile community.

CERTIFIED WATERFALL COUNSELOR

This 2-day course will give you all the skills you need to wean the business off Waterfall into the new Agile reality. You’ll learn to recognize the stages of change resistance:

Denial – “We’ve never done it like this, not going to start now. Unless you’re going to make each sprint eighteen months long.”
Anger – “I wouldn’t scrum with you if you were the last PM on earth!”
Bargaining – “Okay, okay – I’ll meet with you to answer your requirements questions, just give me one more product cycle that carries a three-ring binder full of comprehensive and immovable up-front requirements.”
Depression – “You don’t really want my sign-off. Nobody values my opinion anymore, all anybody cares about is that stupid wiki now.”
Acceptance – “Right, so explain to me again how that task moves from ‘In Progress’ to ‘Done’.”

CERTIFIED AGILE SHERPA

Marketing is from Vegas, Dev is from Alderan. (Silicon Valley. I meant Silicon Valley). There’s a language barrier. The two teams dress differently, have different customs. Marketing needs an Agile Sherpa, a guide and emissary, to help them navigate this unfamiliar world.

Upon completion of the Certified Agile Sherpa course, you will be bilingual, fluent in both Geek and Hype.

You will be able to explain to the Marketing team why “Welcome changing requirements, even late in development.” carries as much fine print as “Facebook values your privacy”. And why code complete isn’t as flexible as their expense account.

You will be able to explain to the Dev team that “The sole success criterion will be the number of clicks generated.” carries as much fine print as “Drink responsibly”. And why there would be another success metric besides velocity.

Are there other certifications that could be useful? Drop me a line in the comments. this could be the start of a beautiful collaboration. With a little fine print…