Can one person adopt Agile techniques?

Rob Cowell picture Rob Cowell · Feb 1, 2010 · Viewed 13.3k times · Source

Looking for work at the moment, I'm seeing a lot of places asking for Agile experience, but until I get a job with a team that is using Agile, I suspect I'll never get the experience.

Is it possible to adopt Agile methodologies with just one person?

Sort of answering my own question, there's similar questions at :-

(I guess I should get better at searching.)

Answer

Steve picture Steve · Feb 1, 2010

You seem to be coming at this from a work experience point of view; if you are looking to build relevant experience to get you a job on an agile project I would probably think a little more laterally.

Firstly could you work with others, maybe on an open source project? That would be a good opportunity to try out agile methods with others who may have more experience.

Secondly, you could look at using some of the common techniques or tools, even if it's just to learn how the tools work - e.g. you could set up a continues integration server to run builds and unit tests when you check in code. If you are working on your own you won't gain much in terms of productivity by doing this but you would gain some skills and have something relevant to say to future employers which would indicate you are committed to the agile style.