Alistair Cockburn on Agile: it's the people that matter

http://www.infoq.com/news/2010/09/cockburn-interview-part2

Alistair's company is:
http://icagile.org/

These quotes are distilled wisdom! An Agile coach warning against turning Agile into a religion, and putting the focus on the Manager responsibility to knit people together, and interpersonal chemistry...

"small, colocated development team: frequent delivery, reflective improvement, osmotic communication"

"pay attention to people in the design process, and to fine-grained, end-to-end feedback (typically accomplished through shorter iterations)"

"The utility of the term "agile" is not yet done, because people still too quickly drift into process religions or mathematical dreamland and forget that our industry is built on people getting together, inventing and deciding as they go. I repeat yet and yet again: people, human people, with all their weird characteristics. Math and process are relevant, but soooo much easier than dealing with the actual people in front of us."


"All the theory in the world does not guarantee that people will work well together. Individual people have strange effects on each other – either increasing trust or trigger unexpected angry outbursts."

"We still make decisions unconsciously in our teams and organizations, we don't discuss how we come to decisions, and we don't discuss alternative ways to make decisions."

"It is all too easy for any manager to lean on a process to improve output, rather than to develop his or her personal skill in knitting together the people across departments."