At reinteractive, we encourage our team to blog, we set aside time each week specifically to give our people the time to create meaningful and valuable blog posts. We do this because we want our team to be able to share (and let’s be honest: to demonstrate) their expertise with the world.
I was talking with some of my team mates today and noted that a couple were in the process of creating some mammoth blog posts. Whilst the content was excellent, the gigantic size of the posts stuck me as being at odds with our Agile practices which we use every day in our software development.
Agile, at its heart, is about delivering early and often to the customer. It allows for delivery of value to the customer as soon as possible, instead of having to wait a long time until a monolithic delivery is made when the product is “complete”. Delivering a monster of a blog post is somewhat like delivering software in a monolithic release. The blog readers have to wait until the entire blog is complete before they can benefit from its content. Add to this the fact that the blogger is slowed by the mere weight of the task they have set for themselves. A worse experience for both the blogger and the reader.
The solution is quite simple. Instead of one giant essay piece, we can be more agile and break up a huge post into smaller sections and deliver them as a series of related posts. This allows the author to get the “product” into the readers hands earlier, and allows the author to work at less daunting challenges. It also has the added benefit of producing a more easily digested and engaging result.
So, keep your eye out for some great posts on our blog soon that will be part of a larger series of posts. And keep your eye out for other ways you can apply agile practices inside your organisation, because Agile is not just for software development.
Do you use agile processes for things other than software development? We’d love to hear how in the comments section below.
