What is Agile?

The Agile Manifesto lays out 12 principles for software development:

“Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer
 through early and continuous delivery
of valuable software.

Welcome changing requirements, even late in 
development. Agile processes harness change for 
the customer’s competitive advantage.

Deliver working software frequently, from a 
couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a 
preference to the shorter timescale.

Business people and developers must work 
together daily throughout the project.

Build projects around motivated individuals. 
Give them the environment and support they need, 
and trust them to get the job done.

The most efficient and effective method of 
conveying information to and within a development 
team is face-to-face conversation.

Working software is the primary measure of progress.

Agile processes promote sustainable development.

The sponsors, developers, and users should be able 
to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.

Continuous attention to technical excellence 
and good design enhances agility.

Simplicity–the art of maximizing the amount 
of work not done–is essential.

The best architectures, requirements, and designs 
emerge from self-organizing teams.

At regular intervals, the team reflects on how 
to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts 
its behavior accordingly.”

Ben and Carl shared a few key points with the crowd:

1. Agile is a must for startups, especially JFDI companies

“Anyone not using Continuous Integration (CI) will not having something demonstrable at the end of the 100 days,” Ben warned. Agile technique maximizes the likelihood of creating quality products that meet customer needs in the shortest timeframe possible. Agile and lean startup are methods that make it possible for startups to go from idea to investment in 100 days.

2. Agile is a direction, more than a destination.

Ben and Carl suggested that the startups figure out which agile practices best fit their companies needs.  There are many agile processes that can work. Ben likes to use Scrum or Kanban at his company, depending on the project at hand.  Carl uses pair programming and ping pong programming at Pivotal Labs.

Wikipedia provides a good summary of the various agile methods available.

3. You can apply agile to other parts of your business.

“One of the most expensive things in the world for a small company is to follow up on late payables,” said Ben. To minimize this cost, Ben and his team even designed the contracts in which they do business in an agile fashion. After giving clients an estimate of how long a project will take, his company requires clients to pay upfront for 2 weeks of work. That cycle repeats itself until the end of the project. If a client doesn’t pay, work does not continue, and when a client does pay, the maximum risk to that client is 2 weeks worth of work.

Not only has Ben never had to spend time chasing down a client for late payments, but this strategy has had a positive benefit on client relations. “A client has never fallen off. Given this structure, the client is continually engaged.” Clients also get to see demos of the iterations as they are completed, rather than at the end of a project.

Carl (@carlcoryell) has worked with agile software methods since 2000 when he implemented the practices in Kent Beck’s Extreme Programming Explained in his first startup. Currently, he’s the Practice Manager for Pivotal Lab’s new Singapore development office and is looking forward to doing agile software development here in South East Asia. Previously, he released the successful BirdsEye iphone app for North American bird watchers and was a partner at Reclaim Media in Seattle where he led the construction of the vinyl record digitization factory.

Ben (@proteusguy) is founder & Chief Systems Architect of Proteus Technologies (http://proteus-tech.com/), a company founded to demonstrate how one can create innovative software in Asia by Asians. By providing true technical career paths (which are practically non-existent in Asia) and implementing Agile concepts throughout every aspect of the company he did just that and now works diligently to help foster the technical startup scene in SEAsia.

Rowan Simpson is a passionate entrepreneur, software developer and investor who creates great products that people love to use.

Rowan founded flathunt.co.nz and sold it to New Zealand’s biggest internet success Trade Me a year later. He was with the auction and classifieds site for its NZ$750m exit six years later. Rowan went on to invest in and develop product strategy for online accounting service Xero through its meteoric growth and IPO.

In 2010 Rowan co-founded Southgate Labs, a software studio specialising in web and mobile applications, with Michael Koziarski and Amnon Ben-Or.

He continues to invest in and advise a number of early-stage ventures, including Vend, Fishpond, Sonar6 and SMX.

You can follow Rowan on twitter @rowansimpson.

The talk is free of charge.  Email Me at erin@jfdi.asia to RSVP.

Rowan told the crowd:

“Work on stuff that you enjoy, with people that you like and who are like you, and be patient because it will take you a lot longer than you think (and it may not succeed at all).”

It’s passion that will get you through the turbulent moments and keep you coding through sleepless nights. When you have that passion, working at a startup isn’t just a bit better than being an employee, “it’s 100x or 1000x better.”

Rowan borrowed Chris Conley’s Happiness equation to illustrate this point:

Happiness = Wanting What You Have / Having What You Want

“Most of us spend time working on the denominator” said Rowan. That’s silly. He continued, “It’s easier to manage your expectations than to get a corporate jet.”

Rowan also warned against wantrapreneurship – waiting for a big check before executing the idea, aiming for corporate jets, yachts, and beach vacations. If you are looking for wealth and material gain, then taking a corporate job is the easier, more rational path toward your goals.

Rowan’s point connects to something the Frog asked in the JFDI Manifesto:

“What stories are you best at telling? What’s the story that only you can tell?”

We posed these questions to the JFDI startups during the application process and again during the grueling first few days of the JFDI–Innov8 2012 Bootcamp in Singapore.

The JFDI Manifesto continues, “somewhere out there is a problem that only you can solve; there is a startup that only you can found. Found that startup. Solve that problem. Don’t found some other startup that belongs to somebody else.”

Visit us at JFDI and you’ll see tired, homesick and overwhelmed founders … but when you ask them about their startups and what they’ve been up to these past 2 weeks, what stands out is the excitement in their eyes and the width of their smiles.