One secret I will share is that I like to think I have the best job ever. I know some of you feel the same way about your jobs. What I most love is that I get to help churches lead people to Christ. I have the opportunity to learn from churches how they minister and what they need to meet their goals. Then we build software to make it happen.

While helping churches evangelize is our ultimate goal, on a daily basis, it’s not quite that simple. There are deadlines, technical issues, and personal matters. We get caught up in the next design meeting, story point estimates, new technology, sprint review… the list goes on.

But just remember that what we do makes a serious impact. And, sometimes, not for the best. We are human and have introduced problems to our churches with some of our releases. Yes, we are not perfect. That’s when it’s even more important to remember that our aim is the same as that of our churches: helping God’s people.

If we do that, the positive effects will far outweigh the negatives. When we remember that common purpose in everything we do, our users will feel about our software the way I do about my Carmex. They’ll say, “I don’t know what I would do without it.”

So, one year later… where are we? In simple terms, we have come a long way baby! We are still growing in our Agile movement, but we have really grown. Not only have we matured in this process, but so has our product.

One of the main differences is getting our team to think from the user’s point of view. All of our development is completed from a user story. Not only do we learn from our clients what they need, we truly communicate with them. All members of the team share the user’s perspective and benefit from it. They understand who the user is, what they are trying to accomplish, and WHY!

Conversation, conversation, conversation is critical. The story evolves and clarifies through each of several conversations. This is the key to the success of Agile. Who knew?

We have moved back into the technology age and are now using a tool set to manage the stories from inception to “done done.” No more yellow stickies, markers, and sticky tac. For some it was hard to see them go; for others, they rejoiced. As for me, I am glad not to be shuffling paper mock ups and designs across my desk any longer.

We now have over a dozen serious administrative tools in place, a robust groups module, exhaustive and customizable user profiles with several layers of security, fully flexible permissions, change logs, a clean and new highly usable interface, privacy preferences, two search options with drop-down graphical abstracts so users can quickly find the records they need, all documented in a Wiki. Well, the list goes on.

In the spirit of Agile, we continue to change and grow as a team. I am looking forward to this year and seeing what difference it makes.

I have worked on many projects and advocate for strong procedures and processes. I tend to be open to change and willing to make change when given the opportunity and the time is right. Well, at the end of last year I embarked on a new project and basically we have turned everything on its head. There isn’t anything we do like we always have when it comes to getting a development project completed. For this particular project we have moved to a completely Agile development shop. The beginning was a rough road, because of “too much change in too short a period of time.” However, a few months have passed, and we are developing into a finely oiled machine.

In March, our team completed Agile training, and, afterward, we dropped electronic tracking of our progress. I repeat…stopped using a computer to record new development. It was a hard thing to do since we write computer software; however, this has been a huge success. We have moved back to working with colored stickies, Crayola markers, Sticky Tac and tape. We write all our user stories on yellow stickies. Tasks are written on colored stickies, and all are placed on a large white board where they are managed. Who would have thought moving back to more of a manual process would be so successful. There are many more concepts behind Agile that have proven successful; you will have to stay tuned.