I met with Tim Gifford today for lunch, and had a really good discussion on using agility in the workplace. It was nice to talk to somebody else who has had some experience with TDD and paired-programming and it was reassuring to know that people are benefiting from these techniques.

I guess, in my case, my failure using agile techniques was a matter of inexperience. That, and the fact that I was working by myself on a project, which is difficult in an agile environment, since a big focus is on collaboration — with stakeholders and developers alike.

Tim made a good point about the importance of multi-developer project teams: Part of the responsibility of a developer in a team is to make sure other developers are not “rushing to the finish line” of development. That is, making sure that others properly test their changes or new code before sending it off.

He also gave me some good tips on how to start changing my work environment in small, progressive steps. For example, start with unit testing. By building automated tests throughout development, it is easier to prove that your application is handling the business rules correctly. In addition, you can work with the client to develop these tests for real-work cases and use this as part of testing toward the end of the project, allowing the test users to focus on other aspects of testing.