Welcome to the latest edition of the Carnival of Agilists - the rotating agile blogroll guiding you to the active voices in the agile community. In this edition we take a look at self-organizing teams, lean methods and a variety of other topics. Enjoy!

Agile Leadership?

We start this carnival with that famous agile leader - Dilbert's boss! It is hard to determine what is more detrimental to an organization trying to be effective with agile methods - the belief that agile is about no planning and documentation, the belief that it is easy and requires so little education and experience to be effective, or that leadership is clueless about either.

Speaking of leadership, Jennifer Fawcett has started a new blog - The Agile Product Owner. Check out her recent post: Applying Agile Product Ownership within TeamsEnterprise Product Manager=Agile Product Owner…I don’t think so… OK, so the title is a bit long. I thought agile was about less documentation, at least that what Dilbert taught me :)

David Alfaro has a new blog - Scrum Costa Rica. Through the help of Luke Hohmann and Stacia Broderick, he has blended the art of product roadmapping with the adaptive approach of Scrum in learning that Agile is about Reality not Fairy Tales.

Lisa Haneberg reminds us that leadership is sometimes (mostly) about deflating that ego and actually meeting people where they are at rather than just plowing ahead in your own way. It is amazing what you can accomplish when you can Partner Better with Peers - Here are Eight Ways.

Can Agile Fail? You bet!
Sometimes our agile community has its rose-colored glasses on too much. We can learn alot more from failure - That's why reading Dilbert is so helpful. Here are a couple of top-notch coaches providing us some real-world failure views...

Sanjiv Augustine counts 11 Ways Agile Adoptions Fail that all leaders should be aware of in guiding their agile transitions.

Joe Little knows something about failure too. In fact, he knows so much he had to split it into two blog postings in his Top Enterprise Impediments Part I and Part II. It's better to know where the landmines are rather than stepping on them.

Michael James: Simple = Scrum. Not Simple = Analysis Paralysis = Failure. He's right. Keep it simple.

Speaking of failure, contracts are a great way to fail - if you don't know what you are doing. Didn't the Agile Manifesto say something about Customer collaboration over contract negotiation? Someone better tell Chris Spagnuolo - he has gone to the dark side in creating a place to discuss Agile Contracting at Agile Commons and the Agile Development Practices Conference.

Agile Practices

•  Dave Nicolette provides a number of helpful keys and links on TDD at XP Days Germany.
• Johanna Rothmann guides us in Using Multiple Life Cycles in Combination on a Project Part I, Part II, Part III
• Mike Griffiths provides a very detailed analysis of Agile Estimating Approaches

Previous Editions All previous editions of the Carnival are referenced at the Agile Alliance website.

Join in the Fun!
Have something that you think is worth sharing? Don’t be shy! We love new ideas and insights. Send us a link to your post at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Future editions will be on the first and third Thursday of each month. If you would like to participate, please send us a link to your post at mailto: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it Or, if you prefer, use this handy dandy carnival submission form.