Agile at my my old company. It wasn't all bad - sometimes it sang

I wanted to capture what it felt like at the fag-end of this contract, having worked for the same company (as a consultant/contractor) for nearly 2 years.  There are some things I feel very annoyed about but also, I want to remember  this.  Sometimes it sang.  I spent most of this week complaining about military analogies for software development, and quite rightly.  So here's a sailing analogy.  Sometimes, when the wind is all over the place, or when you haven't got quite right in your mind where the wind actually is, it feels like you can't get started.  You start to sail, and then you're suddenly becalmed. It's messy, scrappy. But sometimes the wind keeps it a predictable direction and you can head into and an angle.  The boat leans over and it really starts to shift.  And when it starts to shift, the wind gets in the ropes and the boat starts to sing.

And when that happens, the world feels great.  And in my time at my old job, I think there were two periods like that, when the Agile process really sang - roughly April-July '10 and April-June '11.  We got through a lot of work, we delivered a lot of value. We did what we said we were going to do in about the time that we said we would do it.  

I don't know why they were both in the spring, maybe it's got something to do with everybody being on holiday in July and August and again around Christmas.  6 months out of 20?  Maybe that isn't such a bad result.  

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