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The Elephants in the Agile Room
- Isamu 16y agoA watershed moment? I hope we can get some better/more research on what works, why, and under what conditions. Good to see more honesty breaking out.
- arkitaip 16y agoI would like to suggest that a good software development methodology is one that clearly defines the conditions when it should not be used, sorta like Popper's concept of falsifiability. This based on my experience that there simply is no methodology that works for all development projects regardless of complexity, team size, resources available, etc.
- InclinedPlane 16y agoQuite so. Software is enormously varied in size, scope, and character, as are software development efforts. The idea that there is some one size fits all methodology is fairly ridiculous.
- bguthrie 16y agoI don't think the community was being any more honest than it usually is; they're a fairly introspective bunch. Hardly watershed, and most the topics listed have been continually under active discussion for as long as Agile has been around.
- ehutch79 16y agoagile always works, it's a magic bullet that will synergize your life!
- StudyAnimal 16y agoMost of those elephants are continually hot topics in mailing lists, the blogosphere, and twitter. It is a sign of a healthy community.
- ericHosick 16y agoA lot of "Elephants" were brought up in this. I'll just cover one: 7. Politics - A more systematic and thorough acknowledgment that organizational politics play a big role. Agile accepts that there are politics and does acknowledge this. Agile can't fix politics any more than it can fix needing locks on doors. But, it does make it a lot harder to play politics by requiring a lot of transparency in the process and requiring people involved to play very specific and well defined "roles" just to name two. With Agile, organization politics do come to light a lot faster. In my opinion this is good. Agile does not, nor should it try to, fix the problems brought to light.
- jarnold 16y agoI was involved in that community for a few years. (As part of my job -- the business side it Agile.) Ultimately, I got tired of the politics of ideas, organization and labels. What is still fun for me is trying out experiments, learning from them. Reading about others trials in how to organize teams, programming practices and deliver as much value as possible. Keeping track of elephants like these was distracting.
- jacques_chester 16y agoWait wait wait. Agile was hyped to high heaven, and now its founders and promoters are worried that criticism might be over-stated? When you make bold claims, people react energetically. Some people will be the old order (per Machiavelli) and some will be natural contrarians. This doesn't mean they're wrong. The more you push your position, the bigger the backlash. When fertilising the fields of marketing, don't be surprised to find weeds thriving.