“

When to use iterative

development?
You should use iterative
development only on projects
that you want to succeed.

Martin Fowler
Software engineer
“
An organization that
treats its programmers
as morons
will soon have
programmers that
are willing and able
to act like morons only.

Bjarne Stroustrup
Computer scientist
“
Do the planning,
but throw out the plans.

Mary Poppendieck
Lean trainer and author
“
There is nothing
so useless as
doing efficiently
that which should
not be done at all.

Peter Drucker
 “
The only way to go fast is to
go well.

Robert C. Martin (Uncle Bob)

Agile trainer and author
“
The value of an idea
lies in the using of it.

Thomas Edison
 “ Nothing endures but change.

Heraclitus
“
Stable Velocity.
Sustainable Pace.

Mike Cottmeyer
Agile author and coach
“
The secret of getting ahead is getting started.
The secret of getting started is breaking your
complex overwhelming tasks into small
manageable tasks, and then start on the first
one.

Anonymous
“
As ScrumMasters,
we should all value
being great over
being good.

Geoff Watts
Scrum trainer and author
“
It seems that perfection is reached not
when there is nothing left to add,
but when there is nothing left
to take away.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Author
“
It is a capital mistake
to theorize before
one has data.

Sherlock Holmes
Scandal in Bohemia
“
As long as you’re
going to be
thinking anyway,
think big.

Donald Trump
“
Everything stinks
till it’s finished. 

Dr. Seuss
“
Planning is everything.
Plans are nothing.

Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke

 “
Adopt the attitude
that continuous
planning is a good
thing – In every
iteration, expect
your plans to change
(albeit in small ways
if your planning is
effective). Don’t fall
Ian Spence and Kurt Bittner
into the trap of
Agile authors thinking that the
plan is infallible.
“
Right and wrong
cease to be
useful concepts
when you’re talking about
software development.

Kent Beck
XP trainer and author
“
If you want a
guarantee,
buy a toaster.

Clint Eastwood as
Nick Pulovski in
The Rookie
“
A market is never
saturated with a
good product,
but it is very
quickly saturated
with a bad one.

Henry Ford
“
As a software development consultant,
I've never encountered
a successful software company
(although my sample size is limited)
in which the team and project leaders
were not technically savvy. 

Jim Highsmith
Agile author
“
The important thing is not your process.
The important thing is your process for
improving your process.

Henrik Kniberg
Agile trainer and author
“
Most teams aren’t teams at
all but merely collections of
individual relationships with
the boss. Each individual
vying with the others for
power, prestige, and
position.

Douglas McGregor
Management professor
 “
Keep your roadmap simple
and easy to understand.
Capture what really matters;
leave out the rest.

Roman Pichler
Agile trainer and author
“ When forced to work
within a strict framework
the imagination is taxed to
its utmost – and will
produce its richest ideas.
Given total freedom the
work is likely to sprawl.

T. S. Eliot
Poet
“
Simplicity is
the ultimate
sophistication.

Leonardo da Vinci
“
Scrum is like your mother-in-law,
it points out ALL your faults.

Ken Schwaber
Scrum trainer and author
“
Failure is simply the opportunity to
begin again,
this time
more intelligently.

Henry Ford
 “
As a general rule of thumb,
when benefits are not
quantified at all,
assume there aren’t any.

Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister

Software development authors
“
This indispensable
first step to getting
what you want
is this:
Decide
what you want.

Ben Stein
Actor
“
Anyone who has never
made a mistake
has never
tried anything new.

Albert Einstein
“
That which is a feature to
a component team is a
task to a feature team.

Ken Rubin
Agile Author and Trainer
“
Be honest –
Without objectivity
and honesty,
the project team
is set up for failure,
even if developing
iteratively.

Ian Spence and Kurt Bittner

Agile authors
“
The goal is NOT to write code.
If we could ship products and make all this
money without writing any code, we would.
Your job is ship products EXACTLY on time.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re a developer,
tester, program manager, product manager
whatever. Everybody’s job is the same.

Chris Peters
Former Microsoft program manager
“
To be uncertain is to be uncomfortable,
but to be certain is to be ridiculous.

Chinese Proverb
“
Software is the most malleable product.
Companies need to use this
characteristics to their competitive
advantage, and sticking to traditional
waterfall development negates this
advantage.

Jim Highsmith
Agile author
“
The more elaborate
our means of communication,
the less we communicate.

Joseph Priestley
Theologian
 “
Everything is vague to a degree
you do not realize ‘till you have
tried to make it precise.

Bertrand Russell
Philosopher
“
Scrum without automation is like driving
a sports car on a dirt track – you won’t
experience the full potential,
you will get frustrated, and you will
probably end up blaming the car…

Ilan Goldstein
Scrum trainer and author
 “
As an Agile coach, you don't
need to have all the answers;
it takes time and a few
experiments to hit on
the right approach.

Rachel Davies and Liz Sedley

Agile trainers and authors
“
Plans are worthless,
but planning is
everything.

Dwight Eisenhower
“
Bug fixing often uncovers
opportunities for refactoring.
The very fact that you’re working
with code that contains
a bug indicates that
there is a chance
that it could be clearer
or better structured.

Paul Butcher
Software engineering author
 “
In XP, we don’t
divide and conquer.
We conquer and
divide.
First we make
something that
works, then we bust
that up and solve
the little parts.
Kent Beck
XP trainer and author
“
After working for some years in the
domains of large, multisite, and
offshore development, we have
distilled our experience and advice
down to the following:
Don’t do it.

Bas Vodde and Craig Larman

Agile trainers and authors
 “ First-time product owners
need time, trust, and support
to grow into their new role.

Roman Pichler
Agile trainer and author
“
If you tell people where to go,
but not how to get there,
you’ll be amazed by the results.

General George S. Patton

 “
Success is not final,
failure is not fatal:
it is the courage
to continue that counts.

Winston Churchill
“
People are
remarkably good
at doing what
they want to do.

Joseph Little
Scrum trainer and author
“
I like to think of this [testing] in parade
terms. When you’re working a parade, it
is better to march in front of the horses,
rather than behind them, sweeping up.
Worse yet, what if they are elephants?

Ron Jeffries
Agile trainer and author
“
If you define the problem correctly,
you almost have the solution.

Steve Jobs
“
We define an agile tester this way:
a professional tester who embraces change,
collaborates well with both technical and
business people, and understands the
concept of using tests to document
requirements and drive development.

Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory

Agile trainers and authors
“As the tests get
more specific,
the code gets
more generic.

Robert C. Martin (Uncle Bob)

Agile trainer and author
 “
You improvise.
You adapt.
You overcome.

Clint Eastwood as
Sergeant Highway in
Heartbreak Ridge
“
Planning is
a quest for value.

Mike Cohn
Agile trainer and author
“
To say that companies or CIOs
are reluctant to embrace agile
is like saying they wouldn’t
take aspirin for a headache.
And they’re not only
not taking the aspirin,
they’re banging their heads
against the wall and
wondering why it hurts.

Jim Johnson
Software development consultant
“
Our greatest weakness
lies in giving up.
The most certain way to
succeed is always to
try just one more time.

Thomas Edison
“
As a rule of thumb,
for every user who
tells you about a
problem, there will be
between 10 and 100
other users who
experienced the same
problem and didn’t
think to get in touch.

Paul Butcher
Software engineering author
“
Luck is not a factor.
Hope is not a strategy.
Fear is not an option.

James Cameron
“
To achieve great things,
two things are needed:
a plan, and not quite
enough time.

Leonard Bernstein
“
Grand principles that generate no
action are mere vapor.
Conversely, specific practices in
the absence of guiding principles
are often inappropriately used.

Jim Highsmith
Agile author
“
The thing is, Bob,
it’s not that I’m lazy,
it’s that I just don’t care.

Ron Livingston as
Peter Gibbons in
Office Space
“
If everything seems
under control,
you’re not going
fast enough.

Mario Andretti
World Champion Racing Driver
“
Prediction is very difficult,
especially about the future.

Niels Bohr
Physicist
“
To improve is to change;
to be perfect is to change often.

Winston Churchill
“
Whether you think
that you can,
or that you can’t,
you are usually right.

Henry Ford
“
Every great product owner
needs a great ScrumMaster.

Roman Pichler
Agile trainer and author
“
The more they
over think the plumbing,
the easier it is
to stop up the drain.

James Doohan as
Scotty in
Star Trek III
 “
It doesn’t matter
how good you are today;
if you’re not better next month,
you’re no longer agile.

Mike Cohn
Agile trainer and author
“
Focus on idle work
not idle workers
to achieve fast,
flexible flow.

Ken Rubin
Agile Author and Trainer
“
It’s never about
how you start –
it’s always about
how you finish.

Dwayne Johnson
The Rock
“
Agility means that
you are faster than
your competition.
Agile time frames
are measured in
weeks and months,
not years.

Michael Hugos
Agile systems architect
“
We regularly coach groups that ask,
“How can we calculate how many people
we will need?” Our suggestion is, “Start
with a small group of great people, and
only grow when it really starts to hurt.”
That rarely happens.

Bas Vodde and Craig Larman

Agile trainers and authors
“
A good plan violently executed now
is better than a perfect plan
executed next week.

General George S. Patton

“
We don’t need
an accurate
document.
We need a
shared
understanding.
Jeff Patton
Agile trainer
“
If you have a choice of two things
and can’t decide,
take both.

Gregory Corso
Poet
 “
Agile leaders lead teams,
non-agile ones manage tasks.

Jim Highsmith
Agile author
“
Design and programming
are human activities;
forget that and all is lost.

Bjarne Stroustrup
Computer scientist
“
Scrum focuses on being agile
which may (and should) lead to improving.
Kanban focuses on improving,
which may lead to being agile.

Karl Scotland
Agile trainer
“
When we go into that new project,
we believe in it all the way.
We have confidence in
our ability to do it right.

Walt Disney
“
Agile teams produce a continuous
stream of value, at a sustainable pace,
while adapting to the
changing needs of the business.

Elisabeth Hendrickson
Agile author and trainer
 “
People with goals succeed
because they know
where they’re going.

Earl Nightingale
Motivational speaker
“
Opportunity is missed by
most people because
it is dressed in overalls
and looks like work.

Thomas Edison
“
In everything we do,
whether writing tests,
writing production code,
or refactoring,
we keep the system
executing at all times.

Robert C. Martin (Uncle Bob)

Agile trainer and author
“
Agile is all about teams
working together to
produce great software.
As an Agile coach, you
can help your team go
from first steps to
running with Agile to
unleashing their full
Agile potential.

Rachel Davies and Liz Sedley

Agile trainers and authors
 “
No matter what the problem is,
it's always a people problem.

Gerald M. Weinberg
“
I saw a quote from Microsoft today
about how they wanted to become
a more agile organization.
At that point, what does it mean to
be agile? I mean, my definition is
that you accept input from reality,
and you respond to it.

Kent Beck
XP trainer and author
 “It is always wise
to look ahead,
but difficult
to look further
than you can see.

Winston Churchill
 “
Although self-organizing
is a good term,
it has, unfortunately,
become confused with
anarchy. 

Jim Highsmith
Agile author
“
The benefit of allowing a
team to self-organize isn’t
that the team finds some
optimal organization for
their work that a manager
may have missed. Rather, it
is that by allowing the team
to self-organize, they are
encouraged to fully own the
problem.

Mike Cohn
Agile trainer and author
“
Everyone is a genius.
But if you judge a fish
on its ability to climb a tree,
it will live its whole life
believing that it is stupid.

Albert Einstein
“
There’s no sense in being precise
when you don’t even know
what you’re talking about.

John von Neumann

Physicist
“
In a good shoe,
I wear a size six,
but a seven feels
so good,
I buy a size eight.

Dolly Parton as
Truvy Jones in
Steel Magnolias
“
Agile is like
Churchill’s democracy,
the worst possible
solution until
compared to the
alternatives.

David Starr
Agile trainer
“
Kill your product
if a pivot is not
beneficial and
persevering
no option.
It's tough but Roman Pichler
the right thing to do. Agile trainer and author
“
Remember:
it’s not the documentation
that needs to be in sync,
but the people.

George Dinwiddie
Agile coach and trainer
“
The first thing to realize when
formulating your first DoD (Definition
of Done) is that it isn’t cast in stone.
You don’t need to spend an eternity
deliberating what it should be,
because it can evolve over time.

Ilan Goldstein
Scrum trainer and author
“
Any fool can write code that
a computer can understand.
Good programmers write code
that humans can understand.

Martin Fowler
Software engineer
“
However beautiful the strategy,
you should occasionally
look at the results.

Winston Churchill
“
Be prepared to cut your losses –
Canceling bad projects early
is success because you save time,
money and resources that can be
applied to better opportunities.

Ian Spence and Kurt Bittner

Agile authors
“
The best way to get
a project done faster
is to start sooner.

Jim Highsmith
Agile author
“
Optimism is an
occupational hazard
of programming:
feedback is
the treatment.

Kent Beck
XP trainer and author
“
Inside every large program,
there is a small program
trying to get out.

C.A.R. Hoare
Computer scientist