How to be Agile in Waterfall'y type Environment

AGILE, amongst all the benefits it offers (there are some downsides too, I agree) and all the buzz about it in the market, I think being AGILE at work had always made me productive.

I was very fortunate to work for a small software development company where we have delivered very promising and useful products. I personally think that the software development process that we had helped a lot. We were a team of 12-15 people, multiple skill sets including .NET, SQL DB and Testing (including product people too) working on a goal to make the world a better place by practicing AGILE as our development process. It was very well managed team and the leadership. Even though we are making progress every day, the team felt that there is some wastage in resources. So we decided to split the team to 3-4 people teams. The velocity compared to smaller teams vs to the combined teams was very huge. It was more than 3 times the combined velocity. We all could achieve faster and better results.

Doing this everyone became more productive and better team people.

Fast-forward to few years later, I was in a team with 4 people (smaller team, which is good from my past experience) but no AGLIE, in fact no proper process. There were as many managers as the product people as the developers (incl. DB and testing). Imagine the nightmare in the process. My productivity has done down drastically. I didn’t like that. So I developed and practiced my own Agile process within the no proper process environment (not even waterfall) and increased my own velocity/productivity.

This is how I did it:
Daily Standup Meeting: We didn’t have them so I made my own, used to make a report of everything I had done the previous day and listed out the tasks for the present day.

Backlog Grooming Meeting: Again, we didn’t have any, so I used to list out all the required tasks for a certain contract and deadlines for each of them. Listed out any risks/blockages and sent that list to all the Managers and the Product people. Looks like they liked it too. Because they have never seen anything like it.

Retrospective Meetings: Since we don’t have that time to interact with other team members, I used to talk to each one of them personally (and only for 3-5 min) and got feedback from them and as well shared my own with them.

Definition of DONE: are you kidding me, we don’t have any!. So I made sure I got a list of tasks that all my managers were expecting off me and made that as my "Definition of DONE".

And so on….

Like I said, having worked for that small company, I learnt a lot about process, business and being productive every single day. And we named that AGILE. I replicated the same and made my own custom process within a Waterfally type of environment.

I hope it helps you to be and do the same when you are put in such an environment. Let's be productive and

"Be the change you want to Be" .. Mahatma Gandhi.

Thank You
Vijaya Malla.
@vijayamalla