middle-toy-sprint

Three thoughts keep circling in my mind lately, interweaving like a Celtic design: Stuck in the middle; "If it's not deployed, it's just a toy."; Everything is done in a sprint.

I generally find the middle part of any project really boring. I naturally love initiation. I have really learned to love completion. But the middle always sucks. Agile goes a long way to eliminating this nasty middleness. I think an ideal agile project would be completely devoid of this evil plateau of boredom.

For me, completion means software deployed in production being 'used' by users (maybe not in anger but worked with from a meaningful perspective). No toys. Initiation involves reviewing, planning, discussing. Not looking too far into the future and not predictive. Put these together and there's no need for middle.

I like the idea of absolutely everything being completed in a sprint. This seems like the right way to do things. Maybe 30 days is too long but if *everything* has to be completed then maybe not. It's a really long time to wait for feedback, but a nice tangible duration for project governance, planning (not predictive) and reporting. The people who think about money and value, love monthly reports. It's how they run their business. It's how they measure their success, and how they extrapolate their likely annual performance.