The Agile Coach's Night Before Christmas

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Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the hours

Not a team member was working, not even my mouse

Sprint stopped, we were done, I could really not care

Innovation trickled, opportunity scarce

The chilled servers rested, all snug with their bits

Our vision boards look unloved. Atlassian's quit.

And customers' purchases, sent right from their apps

Have just tapered off, not a lot on the graphs.

Warn out from the long and verbose months of blabber

I sank into bed, to dream like a scrum master

Awaiting me? Sprint goals I knew we could smash

Two one-point user stories over two releas plans.

The tune of the metrics review got us glow'n

And clusters of "Yes, we can's" just kept on flow'n

When what to my wondering eyes should I see

But a miniature pager, with eight tiny screens

The series of numbers, so loudly they quipped

I knew in that moment, we shouldn't have shipped.

More rapid than ego, the errors they flew

As I tried to make sense of the data they spewd

More vivid than a mockup, the horror unfurled

A fix was so needed, and fast to the world!

"Now Eclipse. Now SonarCube. Now Jenkins and Slack!"

"On Jira. On Confluence. On GitHub. Rollback!"

As for Ethan, we got resourceful, as all agilists should be, and we found a restroom.

To the top of the ports. Through secure firewalls.

Now deploy! Deploy! Deploy darn it all!

I was still for a moment. My jaw to the ground.

The homepage of the website still not to be found.

As I tried to sort through the wreckage and pain

Asking "What have we done?" "Was our work all in vain!"

I then woke with a start, to the sound of my phone

It was just an alert, from our automated build drone

I had rolled off of my bed and pulled up the site.

The homepage was fine. The website was live.

So as I reflect, on this cold Christmas eve

I know that our team has done their best to achieve

Thank you so very much!!me!

The goals that we've set, and the work that we've done

And I'm proud of the team, each and everyone.

As I look to the future, and the journey ahead

I know that we'll make it, and that I'll defend.

We've spent all year making the product so strong

So we'll keep on doing, what we've done all along.

Here's a future opportunity for you, right now...

Responding to change when the plan goes astray

Like a team that is agile, not only in name.

Our successes, many. Our failures, I'm sure, too

But we'll learn from them all, and we'll adapt like we do

Now I hereby exclaim with a sigh of relief

Merry Christmas to y'all, agilists, and to technology: good grief