To be honest, I'm still not quite sure exactly what "Agile Methodology" is. I've read several books on the subject, and my current client likes to think they use parts of it in their development process. I say "parts" because they really just cherry picked the things that they thought they could sell to management without changing too much of their current process, yet still sound like they're on the cutting edge. There are so many different versions of "Agile Methodology" out there, it's enough to make your head spin. That's why this blog post is so damn funny:
Yeah. Well, they make money hand over fist, because of P.T. Barnum's Law, just like Scientology does. Can't really fault 'em. Some people are just dying to be parted with their cash. And their dignity.
The rest of us have all known that Agile Methodologies are stupid, by application of any of the following well-known laws of marketing:
- anything that calls itself a "Methodology" is stupid, on general principle.
- anything that requires "evangelists" and offers seminars, exists solely for the purpose of making money.
- anything that never mentions any competition or alternatives is dubiously self-serving.
- anything that does diagrams with hand-wavy math is stupid, on general principle.
And by "stupid", I mean it's "incredibly brilliant marketing targeted at stupid people."
Not only is Agile like cholesterol, it's also like Scientology and your local circus. It's probably the most sensible look at Agile that I've read so far. Via Joel on Software.
Update: And here is the response, from Coding Horror:
Rather than wasting time and effort on discriminating between "good" and "bad" Agile, we should be banding together in the name of Anything But Waterfall. The fact that some maladjusted developer or project manager could use Steve's well-written, reasonable sounding rant as a justification to keep their project in the dark ages of Waterfall and BDUF absolutely kills me. Who is the real enemy here?
Read the whole thing.