It is the time of year when gardeners start seeding plants indoors. Beans, Jack and giants suddenly popped into my head. (BTW, if you hire a landscaper, gardening is a waterfall process. If you do it yourself it is more an agile and iterative process. Things are always changing and you are never done.)
In "Succeeding with Agile" by Mike Cohn he states:
"Although team members should always look to share with one another their newly discovered good ways of working, they should resist the urge to codify them into a set of best practices."
Best practices imply perfection; a destination. Agile (and Scrum) should be about continuous improvement. Best practices today should be thought of as the best we've come up with so far, not the best we can do.
Yes, you need to settle things down sometimes and do it consistently for a while. Pick the best approach you have right now and move forward. Analysis paralysis is not what it is about. Chasing the latest and greatest is not what it is about either. Both are recipes for not delivering working code for clients.
But keep in mind there might be a better way.
The ultimate goal is to build better software at a lower cost and with fewer bugs. If you don't your competitors will.
I've said it before… it is a journey, not a destination. Enjoy it and make it as good as it can be; you only get to pass this way once.
