Closing Remarks

Believe nothing,
no matter where you read it,
or who said it,
no matter if I have said it,
unless it agrees with your own reason
and your own common sense.

—Gautama Siddhartha Buddha

Most crucial success factors

When reflecting on the different success factors, it all comes down to communication and continuous feedback. Where feedback can be gained technically via tests and the like, it seems to be more important to obtain the personal feedback of the teams and individual project members.

Retrospectives are a great means for this exchange. However, we can learn the most by speaking directly with the individual project members. The roots of problems often have many facets, which (along with their corresponding solutions) are well-known by people most of the time, but are badly expressed (if at all). In order to succeed, this knowledge has to be uncovered by the change agent.

Stability is negative!

Another important point is that stability is much more negative than it is thought to be. Whenever somebody asks me to stabilize something—for instance the process or the architecture—I wonder why I am being asked to help this thing die. As long as we are allowed to learn, things will change and therefore they will not be stable.