Comments on: To be or not to be… agile

By: Guido Barosio

Guido Barosio — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 02:53:48 +0000

The case is not to get confused with a Project Management methodology, sailing it as a Development Methodology (saw that MANY times). Those are two different things. On another point, a good way to learn about Agile is actually to learn about Classical Project Management. Simple, you cannot think about Agile without being aware on the Classical stuff and how to identify the proper scenery for both methodologies. Great post shuje!

By: MarceZ

MarceZ — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:31:54 +0000

Agree! However, I don’t like to call previous stuff “rigid”. In my experience, a well-tailored RUP can be as suitable and “lightweighted” as any scrum project. Most of the time, “rigid” or “heavy” are words agile evangelists use to understate existing methodologies.

By: sebaprover

sebaprover — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:15:52 +0000

I think we all agree that today Agile is fashionable on IT matters and “marketing” and “media” have quite responsibility towards this. Companies always need to sell and new products are most likely to be better sold than old ones.

For what I’ve experienced, it has some remarkable benefits and it adapts quite well to this dynamic world what we live in.

I like to think that these methodologies are not casual and that they are the result of the society who creates them. Past methodologies were most strict and rigid, because societies were more like that. Today everything is dynamic, everything changes faster and Agile is a response for that.

Also agree with my colleague writer that the main reason for why Agile was born is for “…our collective failure as an industry…” but its characteristics are reflections of our globalized culture.

Bottom line is, we shouldn’t either over or under estimate Agile. It’s just one more option we have.

By: MarceZ

MarceZ — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:26:16 +0000

And you’re right about actual processes and methodologies based on them. Thing is… companies had to “fill the gaps” agile methodologies left. A methodology (like RUP, for instance) doesn’t leave room for that: it says what, how and who does every single step.

However, you and I maybe (maybe!) agree on that fuzzyness of agile methodologies is part of their charm as you can “build” your stuff around their practices.

By: shuje

shuje — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:04:31 +0000

“The force is strong with this one” the emperor would say. You are right. I do not necessarily agree on the “not a methodology” part though. I believe there are a number of companies that have built full methods out of these guidelines and practices.

By: MarceZ

MarceZ — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:11:25 +0000

My grandpa used to say “as you grow older, you get tired of seeing same things over and over”. Probably agile is experiencing what RUP, Spiral, Staged Delivery, Cascade and every single silver-bulletized methodology/process/SDLC has gone through: people realized Brooks is right when he said “there’s no silver bullet”.

Nevertheless, agile has its own peculiarities. First of all, it is not a methodology (if we stick to the definition of a methodology). It looks more like a set of guidelines and practices (specially for requirements management and software development).

The thing is that these practices have been sold in such a pretty package (not without TONS of literature and expensive training courses) and so many companies have used this “methodology” as a selling argument instead of a management technique to achieve projects’ goals, that it is hard to find an impartial voice. Pretty much what happened to Rational and its version of UP.

Hence, and based on my grandpa’s wiseness, my guess is that same thing will happen again and we’ll have to sit and wait for the next silver bullet.