You championed Agile adoption in your organization. Interest grew as your projects become predictable. You led a group of agilists who helped spread the word to more groups. Life was good. Then senior management took notice of the improvements and decided to mandate adoption of Agile. They’ve skimmed some of the books, but don’t have any practical experience. Your agile adoption has just reached a critical stage as it moves from grass-roots effort to management directive. You’re about to lose control of your baby. You’re about to learn that you’ve created a monster.

In 2001, Follett Software Company (FSC) began work on the next generation of its library software. Many options were considered, including sending the effort off shore. In April 2001, members of the Destiny team attended a C-SPIN meeting where Martin Fowler spoke about Extreme Programming (XP). In what was considered a bold experiment at the time, the team chose to adopt an XP process “the most well-known and controversial” of the new agile processes.

This experience report will tell of a “do-it-yourself” Agile success story, with changes, challenges and lessons learned along the way.