Do you remember being a junior developer? Or maybe, before you were a developer, being “that one who knows computers and Excel and stuff” in the office?

Remember how when someone said “it would be great if I didn’t have to do [some manual job that could be easily scripted]”, and you came back the next day with a hacked-together Excel macro or Access DB or shell script that did it for them?

Remember how pleased they were?

And, do you remember how they then said, “but it would be great if it could do [some other thing]” and you came back to them an hour later and showed them a magic button that did just that?

Remember how good that made you feel?

That right there is a short feedback cycle.

That’s what we’re trying to achieve every day with agile.