"Agile" is a transition point.
A better idea would be for the entire team to be motivated, for them to be aware of the customer, to be able to drop something half-way and pick up a priority as a customer scenario unfolds.
In nearly every effective team, I've been part of, the most important detail was that anyone of us could be swapped out for someone else - it's not that we were fungible, but that the UI guy could write backend, the backend guy could write the deploy code. All coming to one point - the specialist could do it faster and neater, except they could do a hack-job in someone else's module anytime.
And if you can get yourself five people who are like that, manage some conflict then you can get a lot more done than any other method I've seen.
Take away the pride, the motivation, point them at misdirected goals, then you end up with nearly nothing.
Agile is the middle ground here - you're demotivated? Go pick something off the burn down chart. You need to leave early? Tell us at the standup. Can I borrow two developers for a week? No, the sprint plan has them accounted for, can I drop features?
Not as a bad as that, but it's not a substitute for a tiny cross-functional team which isn't pulled about by external forces.
A better idea would be for the entire team to be motivated, for them to be aware of the customer, to be able to drop something half-way and pick up a priority as a customer scenario unfolds.
In nearly every effective team, I've been part of, the most important detail was that anyone of us could be swapped out for someone else - it's not that we were fungible, but that the UI guy could write backend, the backend guy could write the deploy code. All coming to one point - the specialist could do it faster and neater, except they could do a hack-job in someone else's module anytime.
And if you can get yourself five people who are like that, manage some conflict then you can get a lot more done than any other method I've seen.
Take away the pride, the motivation, point them at misdirected goals, then you end up with nearly nothing.
Agile is the middle ground here - you're demotivated? Go pick something off the burn down chart. You need to leave early? Tell us at the standup. Can I borrow two developers for a week? No, the sprint plan has them accounted for, can I drop features?
Not as a bad as that, but it's not a substitute for a tiny cross-functional team which isn't pulled about by external forces.