Andrew Webster, agilist manqué.

In around 2004, I saw Dr Neil Roodyn give a talk on XP in Brisbane, Queensland, to the great and the good of the Queensland IT world. He shamed us and inspired us, and it rather felt as though, from that day forward, Australia went agile.

Over the next five years, one or two of the projects I worked on did not follow any kind of agile approach - and bombed. The rest at least attempted agility, and succeeded.  How to measure success?  Everyone ended the project happy.  Happy developers, happy customers, happy management.  The last project came in $9 over budget, because I parked in the wrong deck.

In 2009 I moved to Alabama to marry. My first role, I ran my side of the project, and it went well. Then I was offered a full-time job, and joined corporate America. Excited to make a contribution, I paid for my own Certified Scrum Master, and started to learn that being successful with agility is not about what I know. It's about the culture, and if agility is a fit.

Back in Australia, it was, as pretty much everyone of note in the industry hade been in that presentation.  In Alabama, not so much.

So for the last four years I've been learning prodigious amounts about corporate politics, SDLC, methodology, process, management, and sweet tea.  And how chaos suppresses competence.

Right now, my wife and I are planning a move to San Francisco to be close to her family, and I'm excited, as this will also be a chance to join an agile company and add more experience to my knowledge.  If you're reading this, and you know a great agile company in the San Francisco area - anywhere thereabouts - then let me know.  I really want to be paying it forward into fertile soil, as it were!

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