---
title: "Nice article: Agile Top-Down"
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2005/7/29/nice-article-agile-top-down.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2005/7/29/nice-article-agile-top-down.html"
published: "2005-07-29T21:34:00"
updated: "2005-07-29T21:34:00"
tags: ["Agile Related", "Cool Articles"]
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "\"There's a recent thread on the Scrum list about how an executive or highly-placed manager could get Agile going. I've been one of those guys, and I know a bit about Agile, and here's how I'd proceed. First, focus…"
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# Nice article: Agile Top-Down

By Roy Osherove July 29, 2005 In [Agile Related](https://osherove.com/blog/category/agile-related), [Cool Articles](https://osherove.com/blog/category/cool-articles)

**Historical article** · Originally published July 29, 2005; technical details may be outdated.

_"There's a recent thread on the Scrum list about how an executive or highly-placed manager could get Agile going. I've been one of  those guys, and I know a bit about Agile, and here's how I'd proceed. First, focus management attention on cyclic delivery of running tested software. Second, provide the resources to learn how to do that."
_ [http://www.xprogramming.com/xpmag/AgileTopDown.htm](http://www.xprogramming.com/xpmag/AgileTopDown.htm)

Ron Jeffries

If you a manager in the right place - you can probably **do** these things in your company.

## More in Agile Related

[All posts in Agile Related](https://osherove.com/blog/category/agile-related)

- Aug 10, 2005

    ### [Video of my "Intro to Agile Development" talk at INDA is online](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/8/10/video-of-my-quotintro-to-agile-developmentquot-talk-at-inda.html)

- Aug 9, 2005

    ### [NUnitASP Architecture walkthrough video from Jim Shore](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/8/9/nunitasp-architecture-walkthrough-video-from-jim-shore.html)

- Jul 28, 2005

    ### [Unit test readability should not come in place of maintainability - they go hand in hand](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/7/28/unit-test-readability-should-not-come-in-place-of-maintainab.html)

- Jul 28, 2005

    ### [\[Audio Interview\] Randy Miller on MSF Agile and software modeling techniques](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/7/28/audio-interview-randy-miller-on-msf-agile-and-software-model.html)


---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

- [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
- [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
- [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
- [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
- [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

### Social

- X: https://x.com/royosherove
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/

### Contact

- Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7

### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/