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I think everyone wistfully pining for an era without Agile forgets how many software projects were flat-out abandoned without seeing release after a few years o

I think everyone wistfully pining for an era without Agile forgets how many software projects were flat-out abandoned without seeing release after a few years of dev work. Software development was not a "hot profession" until Agile came along and a software product was no longer a multi-million dollar commitment to get money coming in the door. We all owe the success of the industry to Agile / iterative development, because most of the projects that keep us employed never would have gotten off the ground in a pre-Agile world. One of the oldest cliches in software development is "faster, better or cheaper -- pick two". The prevalence of Agile basically means that "faster and cheaper" is the default answer to this question. If you want "better," the CMMI still exists (and is still heavily used in defense / aerospace).

pdimitar 7y ago
I am strongly sceptical about Agile bringing about software development to be the highly paid and somewhat prestigious profession it is today. I think it was more like the pressure to have software do much more than it did before. Agile is very likely to have played a role but I don't feel the correlation between it and the current state of programming is that strong. There are other factors that mixed with it. What I will always agree with is that Agile / Extreme Programming brought about much needed pressure to stop the waterfall approach in every single area of engineering, programming included. That's the historical role I attribute to it and for that I am very grateful. Anything beyond that, I am fairly sceptical. Agile didn't really do that much in the grand scheme of things.