I first posted this on the yahoo scrumdevelopment group in a hope to stimulate some conversation – or at the very least, to stimulate a funny-bone or too. Not sure if I got there so I post it here as the maiden post of the BigVisible blog. May there be many more to come.

A little while ago, after returning from Agile 2006, I posted a remark about how the biggest threat to Agile is not the Pro-Waterfaller or the Anti-Agilist but rather the Crappy Agilist. Well, following some deep introspection and some heavy flexing of the imagination I realized that “Crappy Agilist” simply has too many syllables to be Web 2.0 compliant. As such, I anoint the CrAgilist

Now if your sensibilities are offended by the word “Crappy” feel free to replace it with any of the following: Cruddy, Crampy, Cranky, Crusty. Makes no difference – the CrAgilist shoe still fits.

The trouble is that CrAgilists usually have good intentions at heart as they listlessly roam the halls searching for the location of the next Change Review Meeting — they typically don’t know they are “CrAgilists”. So, borrowing from the comedic stylings of Jeff Foxworthy, and as a form of community service, I bring you just some ways that may help you identify whether…

“…You Might Be a CrAgilist”

1. If you frequently find yourself answering questions with the phrase “…well what does the requirement document say?” — you might be a CrAgilist
2. If you refer to iteration end dates as “Moving Targets” — you might be a CrAgilist
3. If you need to sign off each task before starting on the next one — you might be a CrAgilist
4. If you can’t get through your stand-up without referencing your gantt chart — you might be a CrAgilist
5. If the daily stand-up can’t happen without you being there — you might be a CrAgilist
6. If you have a sign at your desk that preaches “Because That’s They Way We’ve Always Done It” – you might be a CrAgilist
7. If you ever find yourself complaining that your team has more story points and thus more work then that other team — you might be a CrAgilist
8. If your product owner (or customer) hasn’t seen your product since the Bush Senior administration — you might be a CrAgilist
9. If you choose not to show your product owner (or customer) the latest working product because “his questions just slow you down and confuse the team” — you might be a CrAgilist
10. If it’s ok that your product owner not attend your iteration planning because “we know better what should be in the product” — you might be a CrAgilist
11. If you typically have a requirements iteration, followed by a design iteration, followed by one or more development iterations and then a QA iteration — you are probably a CrAgilist
12. If Resource Leveling is a common part of your vocabulary — you might be a CrAgilist
13. If your development process is Agile 2.0 — you might be a CrAgilist
14. If you are stuck with nothing to work on because there is nothing assigned to you — you might be a CrAgilist
15. If your top priority is eliminating idle resources — you might be a CrAgilist
16. If you conduct a weekly meeting where proposed scope changes are presented, reviewed and signed-off on — you might be a CrAgilist
17. If you are taking on a couple of secret stories just to surprise your customer at the end of the iteration — you might be a CrAgilist
18. If you are sitting around with nothing to do because the buglist hasn’t been triaged in 3 days — you might be a CrAgilist
19. If you think you’re going to be late hitting that integration date in 4 weeks when the back-end code finally gets integrated with the front-end code — you might be a CrAgilist
20. If you had to stop and wonder for too long why any of the above might make you a CrAgilist — you might be a CrAgilist