May 16, 2005

Principles behind the Agile Manifesto

Things are changing. Imagine a world in which IT followed the Agile Manifesto. Just read the priniciples below, wouldn't it be great to be in a collaborative relationship with the customers?

We follow these principles:
Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer
through early and continuous delivery
of valuable software.

Welcome changing requirements, even late in
development. Agile processes harness change for
the customer's competitive advantage.

Deliver working software frequently, from a
couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a
preference to the shorter timescale.

Business people and developers must work
together daily throughout the project.

Build projects around motivated individuals.
Give them the environment and support they need,
and trust them to get the job done.

The most efficient and effective method of
conveying information to and within a development
team is face-to-face conversation.

Working software is the primary measure of progress.

Agile processes promote sustainable development.
The sponsors, developers, and users should be able
to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.

Continuous attention to technical excellence
and good design enhances agility.

Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount
of work not done--is essential.

The best architectures, requirements, and designs
emerge from self-organizing teams.

At regular intervals, the team reflects on how
to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts
its behavior accordingly.

Posted by Elyse at May 16, 2005 11:04 AM | TrackBack
Comments

what a crock! that's how we are suppose to work around here - and all it does is produce mediocre resuts, at best. It becomes a poor excuse for the lack of planning, documentation, standards, etc.

Customers rarely see the big picture - they want a particular problem solved so if it means copying a bunch of code and making a small mod to it to make it work - that's fine by them - problem solved (for them).

But that creates multiple codebases whereas stepping back and looking at the whole series of problems - and then planning thouroughly - can create much better solutions.

To meet such short timelines and lack of thourough design, software is pushed out the door full of mistakes, bad or rough ideas, poor integration with existing or future modules and , more often than not, you're stuck with a bad implementation that you regret being rushed into.

IMHO, nothing beats full detailed planning and Agile is dragged up as an excuse not to do that.

as far as I'm concerned, Agile is discredited as a waste of time.

there is one upside - the more people beileve Agile will solve their problems, the harder it is to do with offshoring. A bit hard to "live in the customers pocket" when you're coding away in India...

my 2c
barry.b

Posted by: barry.b at May 16, 2005 6:20 PM