Being Agile: Eleven Breakthrough Techniques to Keep You from “Waterfalling Backward”

Stable, Dedicated, and Protected

Whole teams are more effective when they are committed to the project for the complete duration of the project. With this approach, teams should get new team members or lose team members only on an exceptional basis. Managers and other project leaders should do everything they can to protect teams from all interruptions so that the teams can get to “Done!” (which is very, very hard to do if management acts like a “fast-forward” button, immediately passing along every interruption to the team).

Although this probably sounds like common sense, it’s not that common. Companies with multiple products typically juggle people between projects to align with changing schedules and revenue expectations. Engineers with particular ...