The agile methodology is basically a combination of three philosophical ideas, that is, perfection of communications, adaptability, and flexibility. In an agile working environment, members of groups are encouraged to keep an open and concise line of communication. Open communications encourage the team members to speak up and contribute their ideas without the fear of being overshadowed by the hierarchical superiority of other members. At the same time, conciseness keeps the communications short, direct, and straight to the point. Similarly, adaptability and flexibility expect the members to speak up if they experience difficulties, that is, early into the project, in an effort for group leaders to make proper adjustments to keep a fluid, consistent, and manageable flow of work among all members. While also trying to meet project goals within the initially specified time constraints. Although our group members have, for the most part, met the basic requirements of working in an agile group environment. There are still many things that could be improved to better perfect and enhance effective communications. After all, learning to work in an agile environment requires extensive collaborative experience, which can only be satisfied with time; that is when students finally step into the workforce and experience society in person.

Responses to the professor or other students

Your post was very nicely written and well said. I like how you’ve mentioned stand-up meetings. In my previous line of work, we also have daily morning meetings to catch everyone up to speed with progress updates. However, it doesn’t always go according to plan, and sometimes the meeting could last up to or over an hour, and that really defeats the purpose of working in an agile environment. For example, I once had a supervisor rambling about how many support phone calls they received the previous day, and never once that they bring up the main point. In an agile environment, everyone’s time is valuable. Therefore, everything that the presenters bring up should be concise, direct, and straight to the point; otherwise, those stand-up meetings are pointless and is a waste of valuable time. I also enjoyed reading about how you mentioned an agile work environment is a collaborative effort. That is for members of a group or a project to use their own strengths and supplement other group members’ shortfalls and weaknesses in that aspect. Unfortunately, I have also seen numerous times that this ideology failed in practice because people will basically lean on others to do their own work, and in the end, it just becomes a race to the bottom. This mentality will eventually lead to a collapse of team morale and erodes the entire team’s effort.