Today we’re launching a new agile software development blog series we’re calling agile @ Atlassian. Whenever we bump into customers and peers, they ask us “how do you guys build great software?” It’s asked so often we pulled together some content around what we do, and how we do it, focusing on the tweaks we’ve made that have improved our process and our product. It’s something we plan to expand over time, as we try new things and chip away at improving what we do.
It’s a bit daunting, because it is so easy to get the whole “agile” thing wrong. A family outing last weekend made me think about that in a different context:
On Saturday morning, my wife and I strolled into a store at the farmers market with our new baby. We found a new outpost to get Blue Bottle Coffee – a San Francisco specialty – without the 30-minute queue. Sleep-deprived (2 month old babies will do that to you), and anxious, we grabbed a coffee and a bag of paella rice for dinner.
At the register, my wife asked for a lid to the cup, to avoid spilling on the baby, and the ecologically-minded barista scolded her. “Aren’t you green?” they asked. “Don’t you know coffee lids are bad for the environment?”. The barista then happily sold us Spainish rice with a MASSIVE 5,700 mile carbon footprint. The green minded zealotry and blatant hypocracy were thicker than the coffee so we laughed it off and headed to Peet’s Coffee for a lid.
This whole situation got me thinking about how we are trying to share what agile @ Atlassian is all about. At Atlassian, we think it’s important to be part of the conversation about agile software development because so many of our customers are using our products to support their own agile processes.
We embrace many practices at the center of the agile approach, BUT we want to steer clear of the double-standards of the eco-minded barista and the Agile process monkey.
We care first and foremost about building quality software and will try any development practice that improves our output and helps us deliver better products to our customers. We will use “coffee lids” when they make our babies safer and even create new practices like “the Disturbed” if we find a new way to be more effective.
There is no one way to build software, so we want to share the multiple ways we build great software as an example of one company’s approach. Our new agile @ Atlassian microsite and blog series will share our past experiences.
To get the ball rolling, the video below contains highlights from interviews with our best and brightest developers, discussing their personal views and experiences with agile software development:
Read our agile software development blogs
