Moving to Agile does lots of things, but one of the most important is that it puts the focus back on writing code. We spend a whole lot less time, energy and worry on producing design documents, requirements specs and architecture diagrams. Instead, we get to the point of writing code and testing it as quickly as possible.

And wasn’t that what the developers always wanted to do anyway? Weren’t developers always champing at the bit trying to write code “too early?” It’s interesting that, instead of finally figuring out how to hold back our developers, we’ve gone the other way and flipped our processes around to fit how developers want to work.

In an Agile team room, development is king. The team is there to make sure that great software emerges quickly and correctly. Business analysts write cards and organize tasks to assist development. Testers write tests to provide feedback to the developers. Iteration managers clear roadblocks that the developers encounter.

In fact, being a coach of many of these roles, and often playing the roles myself, I’ve realized that I am doggone jealous of the coders. They make stuff happen! They write code and things come together. They are the center of our attention. This isn’t to say that the other team members aren’t equally important, but it is a switch from the days when project managers thought they were “senior” to developers or testers. No more!!

In waterfall-land, I would never have considered going back to writing code in my spare time, or sitting with a developer on my team and figuring out how they are doing what they do. But with Agile, I find myself more and more drawn to the code. How is it working? How did you build that? Why did you pick that tool instead of this one?

I think it’s cool that Agile has flipped my career ambitions upside down. Instead of being a manager of a small project hoping someday to be a manager of a super-big project, I’m now a manager wishing I was a coder.

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