Agile Robots

Yesterday Boston Dynamics released a video of their Atlas, Spot, and Handle robots dancing in coordinated fashion. It’s pretty incredible*:

When I watch this, I can’t help but remember the other BD videos throughout the years, and if you watch a few of them, it really shows the progress they’ve made:

It’s uncanny to see something so robotic be so lifelike. But the liveliness in the first video comes from years of testing, learning, and iterating. (The first video was posted seven years ago!) Somehow I doubt Boston Dynamics thinks they’re near done.

BD’s efforts in this space are a good example of Agile development with long cycle times. Robotics is complex, and that complexity requires time to test, learn, and iterate on. But a team – a company – can still be Agile in those circumstances.

Every Agile leader has heard something along the lines of “Going Agile will make us go faster.” However, that’s not necessarily true. Adopting Agile best practices will help teams learn faster, by getting smaller features out the door more often. That’s not quite the same as ‘more code in the same time frame’. The definition of “faster” is relative, and should be commensurate with the effort on hand. If you’re building a basic iOS app, perhaps that’s weekly. If you’re building dancing robots, perhaps it’s a more annual cycle. Keep this in mind when setting expectations with Leadership or teams as they being their Agile journey.

Happy dancing!