The Elephants in the Agile Room

http://pkruchten.wordpress.com/2011/02/13/the-elephants-in-the-agile-room/

by DanielRibeiro • 15 years ago

29 9 15 years ago

pkruchten.wordpress.com

Isamu• 15 years ago

A 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• 15 years ago

I 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• 15 years ago

Quite 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• 15 years ago

I 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• 15 years ago

agile always works, it's a magic bullet that will synergize your life!

StudyAnimal• 15 years ago

Most of those elephants are continually hot topics in mailing lists, the blogosphere, and twitter.

It is a sign of a healthy community.

ericHosick• 15 years ago

A 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• 15 years ago

I 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• 15 years ago

Wait 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.

The Elephants in the Agile Room

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