Agile Gardening

I’m always a little envious of people with those picture-perfect gardens you see in books and magazines. This is a picture of my vegetable garden. As you can see, it’s not picturesque.  The weeds and grass have taken over large areas.  The squash has spread and mixed in with the pumpkins.  Next to that is a large barren area where I planted some shell beans that never sprouted.  

But that’s OK.  The goal for my garden is to grow as much food as I can without the use of pesticides or chemical fertilizers, with as little effort as possible.  The goals for your garden may be different.  Maybe you want the picture-perfect garden surrounded by a white picket fence.  Perhaps you have a homeowner’s association that has size restrictions for your garden.  Or maybe you dislike vegetables and want a flower garden.

In our Michigan Agile Philosophy (the MAP), we call this “knowing what done looks like”.  The Product Owner has a vision, and they define what’s important to them.  But the Product Owner can’t do it alone - they must take into account the needs of other stakeholders.  My wife wants to plant sunflowers in a spot I think would be perfect for my hops.  My son loves tomatoes, but hates lettuce.  The Product Owner must take these conflicting needs into consideration.

Iteration is another element of our MAP that comes into play in gardening.  Take our tomatoes for example.  

The first year we used those cheap cages they sell at nurseries to keep our tomatoes propped up.  They gave us so many problems!  Once the plants got large enough, the cages couldn’t support them any longer.  A strong thunderstorm blew several of our plants over and a couple of them died.  The next year I built cages out of steel concrete mesh.  They worked much better!  However, rabbits could get through the holes in the mesh and ate several plants while they were still small.  The next year we added some chicken wire to the bottom of the cages, but our troubles didn’t end there.  By the time August rolled around, the plants were so large we couldn’t get in between them to pick tomatoes.  So this year we’ve planted them further apart.  Probably too far apart, actually. Maybe next year I’ll get it right!

Working in iterations allows you to learn what works and what doesn’t work.  Getting some small successes under your belt helps to build some momentum and confidence!  We started with a small garden and now have over 1800 square feet of garden space.  Every spring we take the lessons we learned from the previous year and apply it to our new garden.  If we tried to do it all from the start we would have quit after the first year.  

There are opportunities to apply Agile thinking everywhere.  We don’t have to leave it behind at the workplace.  Try applying it to your next garden, home improvement project, or hobby and see if you notice an improvement!