Agile & Delivery
Everything you need to know on the Agile way of working and delivering results at Holistic Engineering Laboratories Ltd.
Rules
Find someone who tells you exactly what to do. Then it's their responsibility to follow up on how you're progressing. As long as they don’t ask, you don’t have to lift a finger. And if it turns out to be the wrong thing, well, that’s not your problem, is it?
Once you have a detailed, foolproof plan, stick to it rigidly, no matter how the circumstances change. Under no circumstances should you work iteratively or try experiments and pilots. Those might reveal that your plan isn’t perfect, forcing you to adjust it—and that would be a real waste of time.
Treat all your tasks as if they’re equally important. If you start prioritizing and actually stick to it, you might end up neglecting some tasks altogether due to limited time and workload—or worse, you’d have to delegate. It’s much better to start a little bit of everything and finish nothing. At least then, the sheer volume of tasks gives you a solid excuse for why nothing ever gets done.
As a sprint or PI comes to an end, make sure to close all tickets—even the ones that haven’t been worked on or completed. This ensures that you and your team look great. You can always create new tickets for the next sprint/PI. This approach results in beautiful statistics that, thankfully, bear no resemblance to the actual progress of the work.
Turn every task, no matter how technical, into a User Story—regardless of whether there’s an actual user involved. Always use the template "As a ... I want to ... so that ...". If you can’t think of anything fitting, just start with "As a developer/architect/process owner ..." and you’re good to go.
When estimating workloads, be as dynamic as possible: use a different reference scale for each task, but keep the naming of your unit consistent.
To champion heroics, aim for the hockey stick shape in your burn-up charts. This way, you and your team can showcase how you heroically accomplish an infinite amount of work at the last moment. It also increases your chances of being named Team of the Year.
Seize every opportunity to present your project as red, only to skillfully turn it green at the right moment—proving that you and your team have what it takes to be real heroes. If that’s not feasible, the reverse strategy works just as well: keep your project green until the very end. This shields you from disruptive management attention and lets you step away just before it becomes glaringly, irreversibly red and crashes spectacularly.
Always stick to the motto DIY. Never use existing tools or standard solutions. A custom solution developed by you and maintainable only by you ensures long-term job security.
Promote innovation in your company by banning the use of new tools due to security concerns. This way, you effectively force your colleagues to develop their own solutions - nothing drives creativity like reinventing the wheel under pressure.
Sounds familiar and nevertheless strange?
Take a look at why this page exists – our motivation and how you can work with it in the application.