[Personal] Got severely misquoted by Taloussanomat
(But isn't all publicity good publicity?)
More press for agile methods in Finland.
The result of a recent phone interview I gave to a Finnish business paper, Taloussanomat, apparently went online last week. If you've got the knack for Finnish, it's freely available on their web page with a snappy title, "kuinka ketterä olet?"
I'll just go ahead and translate a couple of "gems" for the international audience...
Please note that I did not say these things. Really, I didn't! :)
"We use the Scrum method from rugby where the team gathers together shoulder to shoulder."
"Agile software development means focusing more on people and interactions rather than on processes and tools. This creates better tools and processes."
At this point, I had to pinch my arm to convince myself that I'm not just making it up. And, finally, one more pearl for the swines:
"Agility is a synonym for Agile, and also an endurance sport for dogs."
All in all, I welcome the attention agile methods are getting but I can't help making a bit of fun of the kind of misunderstandings that seem to be inevident when interacting with members of the press over a phone line. Ironic, isn't it, considering the topic of my recent talk...
Not to mention that they misspelled the name of our company as well :)
Always make the journalist to leave the final approval of the text to yourself. The only way to weed out the worst errors is to do it yourself.
When I wrote some articles to student magazines, it really surprised me how easy it was to get facts from an interview wrong, even with an honest effort.