Probably a very naive question (or set of questions) from an agile newbie: If I have a single developer, what agile methods would suit? Will the overheads of meetings, estimations, etc. from Scrum be too great?
On a related note, what agile methods would work for self-management? My feeling is that a basic Kanban approach might be useful, but I'd be grateful for any advice.
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mkleene
Estimation definitely has value, I think. Letting the customer know how much things cost is key to letting them decide how to use their resources.
The other part that I believe really has value is the emphasis on delivering incremental versions of the software early and often. Numerous studies have shown that the earlier a defect is uncovered the cheaper it is to fix. This includes defects in requirements.
Depending on how disciplined you are it might or might not be worth having iterations to deliver functionality to the client. Just letting them know when features are ready to have a peek at might be enough.
Stephen Conley
[ Editor ]
Definitely to work in iterations is a good way to start, get the developer to think about always having the software in working condition at the end of every iteration, getting pieces of work finished instead of all coming together on release day, whenever that may be. A demo to yourself at the end of the iteration would also be very useful to everyone.
A stand up meeting at the start of every day would also show commitment to the process, keeps you well informed of how things are going.
You could implement a card wall and track work in progress, that way you could always see at a glance how everything is getting along.
The developer could always implement good agile programming practises like unit testing and refactoring.
D. André Dhondt
There are a lot of technical practices you can start with (see http://www.agileskillsproject.org/agile-skills-inventory/confidence and http://www.agileskillsproject.org/agile-skills-inventory/technical-excellence), then you can start managing your priorities in a backlog similar to Scrum or XP, so when working with your "customers", you'll be able to discuss priorities in context of other tasks.
jbrainsberger
When I did "XP for One" while working at IBM, I used weekly planning with a spreadsheet, test-driven development, per-task integration into my team's version control system, and tasks that averaged 1 day in length. I used index cards to track tasks for myself and the spreadsheet to show my manager what I was doing each week at the status meetings. It worked quite well for me, giving me the chance to learn agile programming practices, build my component in small increments, project meaningful end dates and even add the database integration last! I enjoyed it.
marcin niebudek
+1 to Steves recommendation for programming practices. You probably won't find any particular agile flavor that can be adopted by a single person fully by the book as most agile methods focus on teams communication and process transparency which you might not need.
Bu you can get lot of value using most of XP practices (maybe except pair programming ;-)
If it's only about personal management then kanban will probably be the nearest to what you need as you may not want to artificially timebox your own work. However if you are some kind of freelancer with some external clients. Then iterative development along with demos and frequent revisions on you backlog may do lot of good in your relationship with the clients.
I would also recommend reading this paper about personal productivity by Paul Klipp which will surely give you some ideas on being hyper productive:
Thanks for the Paul Klipp link. In particular, the link to http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/ has been very helpful for me.