Agile

It's the topic that stirs much emotion in the software development field. Being in the field for 30+ years I've had the opportunity to be involved with many different types of development methodologies with Agile only being the latest among them. Each of them have aspects that are shared but may be implemented differently in different phases of the development lifecycle and Agile is no different.

The need to gather and understand the customers requirements, the need to track progress during coding and to verify the operational aspects of the work thus far. All of these aspects exist in different methodologies to different degrees. My personal perspectives on Agile are:

• It’s not the holy grail of development methodologies. 
• It tries to instill from a process what good concerned developers should already contain and just using a different process will not over come developers ill suited for a project. 
• It tries to instill a mantra that could be perceived as “somewhat” of a religion. It’s this last issue that most disturbs me, as this could blind people to the issues that need to be addressed for any given project. 

Any development methodology can not remove it’s self from the company, people and teams that it effects. Any selected methodology must be flexible for the needs not of just the developers but of project management, QA and the people that are involved in all aspects of the project. It cannot remove it’s self from the need of a sound foundation and no amount of refactoring (which can lead to a type of thrashing), tests or strict adherence to any methodology will make up for this. Foundations such as: 1) starting with a well thought out architecture and development structure, 2) having the goal of providing the company (they are your first customer) and the end user with a usable solution (a product or service) and 3) guiding well matched staff to develop the product.

Any development methodology should not be an end unto it's self instead of just another tool.