Agile Development Blog

In Boulder Colorado, it has been freezing cold and bright blue on the first day of both January and February. These 2 clear and crisp days have formed a meteorological metaphor for me about the year ahead. Let me give you some examples:

Back at 3333 Walnut in Boulder

• In early February, Rally moved our offices to one of our previous Walnut street addresses: 3333 Walnut street in Boulder. This time we are inhabiting the entire building, not just the first floor. The bright paint, open floors, wonderful art and huge windows are providing a clear and crisp view of the Boulder Flat Iron Mountains as well as Rally’s future.
• After a year of working on our Rally 2020 shared vision, starting with individual employees, moving up to groups and then into departments, that vision has now been incorporated into our 3-5 year planning. This long-term visioning has informed our 2011 planning in a way we couldn’t have imagined.  It is amazing how that shared vision exercise has put a clear and crisp focus on our planning.
• The 10 year Agile celebration that Alistair Cockburn held last week in a bright blue Snowbird Utah provided a clear and crisp view of what our industry needs to tackle in the coming 10 years. In Mike Hugo’s post on the event, we gained a clear, crisp of view of our mission: “Maximize value creation across the entire process.”
• Dean Leffingwell just published his Agile Requirements Management book.  I believe this will be the critical Agile requirements text in Universities around the world for many years to come.  Dean’s clear, crisp writing style and big picture model provide a promising vision of the value of Agile for the future of large organizations.
• Our Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) team has recently received internal funding from Rally due to some great ideas and hard work. The CSR team’s January planning efforts will become public next week.  This is exciting. Thanks to this team’s perseverance, my early visions in this area of social responsibility are now starting to become a clear and crisp realization.
• We recently hired a new VP of Engineering and Operations, promoted our VP of Products to also be a CTO with me, and promoted a Director of Product Marketing to VP of Products.  With these promotions to support our growth and my upcoming sabbatical, 2011 is definitely looking clear and crisp for me.

What visual metaphor is becoming clear and crisp for you in 2011?

Ryan Martens is a member of NRDC’s Environmental Entrepreneurs, founder/CEO of the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado, and Founder/CTO at Rally Software Development.