Knowing your pace in a agile enviroment

So while i would like to discuss some code i felt that there was something a little more important to be discussed today. So to begin this discussion i will begin with a quote that i heard in a movie the other night but struck a chord in me because it relates so well to programming and projects (open or closed source) in general.

‘If you cant keep up , Don’t step up’ — Can’t remember who said it but i will check on this.

Now while this may seem very harsh to quite a few people you always need to remember one thing and that is unless people have specifically asked for your help and unless they really need your help , chances are by joining the project you are going to slow down the pace of the project.It may make you look cool that you were just able to join  a project and help out even though you have so much work but remember that while a project may look easy from the outside its alot tougher once you join the team and start working on it as well. This becomes especially true in the agile environment where things move along so fast.

As soon as some one goes into a sprint (SCRUM) every second counts , by coming in as a new person and trying to catchup on everything that is going on personally ( alot of people do this) you slow the project down as people need to dedicate time to you. There are reasons why processes are documented and meetings are held and it is for this exact purpose of getting people involved in a project.

While it is ultimately up to the Product Owner to decide if new people should be brought in after the project has been initiated,i feel that they should not be as it just interferes with the workings of the project. Although there is one case i feel that is a exception to this rule and this is pair programming. Granted in most cases the people involved in pair programming are already involved in the same project because of the way that pair programming works. But if a new person is introduced to a project , said person should do the following things first, 1.) read up as much on the project as possible before joining the team , 2.)  join as a navigator in a pair programming team. This will allow the new user to jump into the project at a fairly fast pace and not cause a hold up with any of the current project workings.

It is at this point that you need to decide (rather just a little before joining) if you can keep up with the project .It is sometime better to stay behind or leave a project if you know you are going to negatively impact a project. I have seen to many cases where people that should not have been included because they wanted to (or thought they knew alot) but ended up causing so much internal politics that they were forced to leave the project.

As always let me know if you have ever needed to back down from a project or have you just stuck it out and hoped for the best ?

~stalkerh