Wednesday, 6 August 2008

What can go wrong with Agile approaches

Over the years, most (competent) software developers discover that an iterative approach -- Prototype; demonstrate; modify; demonstrate; rinse and repeat -- is essential for successful software development. In recent years this kind of approach has been formalized and elaborated as the Agile family of methods: XP, Scrum etc.

Here Gojko Adzic reports on a talk given by Henrik Kniberg -- author of Scrum and Xp from the Trenches -- on how software development can be screwed up anyway. He presented a long list of issues that have cropped up in Agile projects and -- interestingly -- had audience members hold up cards to signify how much of a problem each pathology was to them.

A good professional development exercise would be to go through a subset of the list with red/green/cards, and talking about the whys, wherefores, and possible remedies.

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