Agile - With less experienced people

[Arunnima B S]

Hi,

How do we run an agile project, if we have only less experienced people available?

Thanks,
Arunnima

[Aaron Turner]

I am also interested in how Agile should be done with less experienced developers. Is there a good way to adopt just a few of the Agile methodologies and slowly add more as developers gain experience?

Thanks,
Aaron

[Shane Warden]

Hm, good questions. When you say your developers are "less experienced", do you mean they're all relative programming novices, or relative novices to XP or agile development?

[Aaron Turner]

Not that they are programming novices, but are new to Object Oriented Programming and XP/Agile methodologies. Actually they are still beginning Java developers.

[Ilja Preuss]

In my experience, Agile is just great for novices, assuming that there is an experienced coach available for mentoring. The rapid feedback an Agile approach provides considerably reduces the risk of somebody going in the wrong direction for a long time, and together with the very close collaboration, it makes for a great learning experience.

I once was in a training project with four developers fresh from the university and two with two years professional experience. We did three day iterations, after two weeks delivered the first working system to our (internal) customer which did exactly what we promised, and for the third week were able to turn on a dime when totally new requirements came in. It was a great experience.