Agile Consequences

Some people think that we - my friend Julie and me – shouldn’t have tried to become Agile coaches. But at the time we needed some work, so when Julie saw a pharmaceutical company advertising for coaches with ‘Agile project management experience…’ she said we should be creative with the information on our CVs and apply.

“Come on Paula,” she said. “How hard can it be? And look at the money Simon got paid!”

Simon was Julie’s latest ex-boyfriend.  He was a proper Agile coach, but Julie had dumped him after a couple of weeks because he wasn’t very agile in the bedroom. Luckily for us, he’d left a load of material about this Agile project management stuff behind in our flat, so we spent a weekend learning all the necessary vocabulary and on Monday we went to see the company’s HR department.

Now, me and Julie have worked in HR departments ourselves, so we knew that as long as we sounded confident and used lots of technical terms they’d pass us onto the department manager for the real interview. We were a little worried about that, but she – Mrs Evans - was so desperate to tell her boss that she was using this fashionable new project management technique that she gave us a six month contract straightaway. We were told to come back the next day to be introduced to the Project Recreatine team.

“I should warn you,” Mrs Evans said as we walked to the project laboratory for the first meeting. “They’re all amazing chemists. Super intelligent, but not good at communicating, even with me. Our customer is an internal one, the sales department. But they complain my team can’t understand what’s wanted.”

“Don’t worry, Mrs Evans. As scrum masters, we’re going to be the interface between your team and the product owner,” I answered, recycling Simon’s Agile vocabulary. “We’re coach and facilitator for all stakeholders. We are the translation software to make sure real communication takes place.”

Mrs Evans looked impressed and opened the door. “Hello everybody!” she said. “Let me introduce Julie and Paula, your new … umh, what was it again? Ah yes scrum masters!”

Ten pairs of large spectacles turned to look at us.

*

We knew we had to win their trust. Now, according to Simon’s material it was important for an Agile team to have a clear vision of the product wanted. But when we asked them what this was, they weren’t clear.

“Something to make people cheerful without any side-effects that are bad, dangerous or addictive,” said Andrew, who was dressed completely in black and only looked at his shoes when talking. “But what is cheerful? What is bad? What’s the point?”

“Cheerful is how I feel when I see a formula like (2R,3S,4R,5R)-2,3,4,5,6-pentahydroxyhexanal,” said Leanna. “It looks so ... wowy!”

 “Hmmh,” said Julie. “Maybe we need to go to the pub...”

^*

Next morning it was a sorry group of chemists that collected in the laboratory. Leanna was holding her head while Andrew and the rest of them were quite green.

“Right guys, how are you feeling today?” I said, banging my coffee mug down on a bench. “Bad?” Everybody groaned.

“Exactly,” continued Julie. “But how did you feel earlier?” she put some of the photos we’d taken the previous evening on a screen, and pointed to one showing the team doing a conga down the street led by Andrew in a gorilla costume. “That looks fun!”

“And that’s what the product owner wants,” I concluded. “Something that makes people cheerful, but without the hangover afterwards!”

Behind ten pairs of large spectacles, the lights went on.

*

Six months later and we were ready to show the nearly finished product to the product owner. We’d followed the whole Agile process described in Simon’s files: daily scrum meetings, two-week sprints where the team focused on particular parts of the product and then sprint review meetings with the product owner to check he was happy. The team was very enthusiastic, especially Andrew who had developed enormously. He’d stopped wearing black and even begun looking at other people’s shoes instead of his own when talking to them, especially Julie’s. He followed her around like a puppy. He was sweet, but I warned him that he didn’t have a chance with Julie. She preferred sporty types to intellectuals, I told him.

“We’ll see,” he muttered. “By the way, your shoelace is undone.”

Next day we invited the sales department to our laboratory.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Mrs Evans, taking the lid off what looked like a giant box of chocolates. “We are proud to present our greatest creation. Recreatine is an anti-depressant with no side-effects. It makes life fun, in fact we believe ...” she paused and gave a little laugh. “... we should call these things ‘Recreations’!” We all smiled politely. “Today, we’d like to offer everybody the chance to try one!”

It was very exciting. This was the first time that Recreatine had been put into chocolate truffles. It started nicely. People got chatty and – amazingly – I saw Andrew talking directly to Julie and not her shoes. Yes, he was looking at her chest not her face, but this was a big improvement. At some point somebody passed the box around again and I had a second chocolate. Pistachio this time. But then things got out of hand.

Later we found out that it was the cocoa. It had the effect of doubling the impact of the drug itself, which meant everybody got a little too cheerful. Starting a food fight in the canteen was bad enough, but turning on the fire sprinklers in the whole building was going too far. At some point I lost Julie, so I was on my own when security told me to go and never come back, but even that didn’t stop me singing all the way home. I went to bed and fell asleep.

When I woke next morning, I lay still for a moment remembering everything. It was embarrassing, but physically I felt fine. Recreatine definitely worked. Something that made people cheerful with no side-effects! I got up to look for Julie.

She was in the kitchen drinking orange juice and behind her, dressed in Julie’s pink dressing gown and making tea, was Andrew. He saw me, squawked and hurried back into Julie’s bedroom.

 “Oh my God! Please tell me I didn’t see that!” I begged. “Tell me that was just some weird side-effect from yesterday!”

“Sort of,” answered Julie, blushing. “You see ... we’re going to get married!”