If You Give An Agilist A Cookie…
If you give an Agilist a project, He’s going to ask for some stories.
When you give him the stories, he’ll probably ask you for a sprint.
When he’s finished he’ll probably ask for a retrospective.
Then he will want to reflect on his work and look to improve.
When he reflects on his work he might notice he can do better, so he will probably ask for a pairing session.
When he’s finished with the pairing session, he’ll want some unit tests to validate his work. He might get carried away and write tests for the whole application. He may even end up automating them all as well!
When he’s done, he’ll probably want to collaborate with his peers. You will fix a common work area for him, with a task board and a lava lamp. He’ll crawl in and make himself comfortable and break the build a few times.
He’ll probably ask you to read him a story, so you pull one off the backlog and read it to him, and he’ll ask you to see the tasks. When he looks at the tasks, he’ll get so excited he’ll want to implement one. He’ll ask you for an IDE and a CI server.
He’ll create a build. When the task is finished, he’ll want to review it for acceptance with the PO. Then he’ll want to update the task board. Which means he will need…sticky notes.
He’ll update the taskboard and stand back to look at it. Looking at the task board will remind him that he can do some more cool stuff, so…He’ll ask for another sprint.
And chances are if he asks for another sprint, he’s going to want another story to go with it.
The end.
Paraphrased from the marvelous children’s classic, “If You Give A Mouse A Cookie”, by Laura Joffe Numeroff & Illustrated by Felicia Bond