When I told the team at my previous company that I was joining Microsoft, there were few who showed their disappointments.  I was their Agile cheer-leader and they couldn't believe that I chose Microsoft.  Why move all the way across the country (NY -> Seattle) to join the company that loves to do things in its own ways and plays deaf when others try to tell how to do it correctly?  And that was when Microsoft pretended that they knew what TDD was better than anyone else in the planet.

I had one simple answer to those.

"That's exactly why.  Wouldn't it be great if I can help them become more Agile?"

Of course, that's not the only reason why I joined Microsoft.  Building great software that impacts thousands of people was something I've always wanted to do and Microsoft was the perfect place to do that.  But I definitely wanted to challenge myself and see if I could make Microsoft become more Agile.  By the way, I currently do not have any plan to go knock on Bill Gate's door and tell him to understand Agile values and transform the entire company to become more Agile.  I will be happy if I can start making small changes and see this company naturally embrace Agile values.

And I have a great news to share with my former Agile cult members.  Today, I made my first step towards my goal.  A new group called Visual Basic Agile Champ has been officially formed today.  The goal of this group is to become a resource for people inside Visual Basic who wants to learn and try Agile values and practices.  It's a small team for now (4 including myself).  Mike Sampson, SDE, has been working on recommanding process improvements to Visual Basic.  Chris Smith, SDET extraordinaire (his word), has worked with Mike on pilot XP projects and had great successes.  Stephen Provine, SDE, has a deep passion around unit testing.  He has done some great stuff around improving unit testing capabilities in Visual Studio (and I had great conversation with him about Microsoft TDD incident).  These are people who want to make changes, who are passionate about helping people do their job better and truly believe that it's possible.  I am honored to be invited to join the team. 

What's really great about this team is that it has management support.  And I know very well what can happen when you do not have a full support from management.

Making the first step is always exiciting.  It's only one step but you know your journey has started.  Just need to make sure that every move you make puts you one step closer to your destination.

Agile rocks!

[Update] By the way, Mike Sampson is the guy who appeared in Quality Milestone video I mentioned before.  He clearly has big interest in this stuff...