In a message dated 2/11/2004 7:25:52 AM Pacific Standard Time, [email protected]
writes:
> In the end its all the same. I find this particular ML to provide
> thoughts, philosophies, tips &techniques, approaches and ideas that are not limited
> to the Agile Community.
Exactamundo, at least from my perspective. As I have posted on several
previous occasions, when I discovered the Agile Modeling forum, it was like
discovering a family I didn't know I had. At the time, I was interested in finding
others who shared my philosophy of regarding "building better software, faster".
This philosophy paralleled the principles of the Agile Manifesto so closely
that I felt that I could have written them myself. Nonetheless, I was somewhat
put off by the same thing that several visitors to this forum have reported:
the lack of hard and fast "bullet points" that could be applied as part of a
relatively well-defined process. It was only after a couple of months of
participation, and a face-to-face visit with Scott Ambler and Mike Visdos at SD Expo
West last year that I realized what "being Agile" really meant. It was in many
ways a confirmation of what I have believed to be a very effective approach to
the process of software development. Happily, as it turns out, despite my
somewhat "unorthodox" approach to software development, the manner in which I
have been applying agile principles over the years has worked for me, and those
of my clients (the desperate or daring ones that I've frequently mentioned) who
have "taken the plunge". (A bit of clarifation might be in order here: I
specialize in (1), the rapid development of custom business application systems or
"one off" proof-of-concept prototype application systems (including data
warehouse systems), (2) the rehosting of application systems to multiple
platforms and data access methods (for example: VSAM files on a mainframe to a DBMS or
other file system on the target platform), adding functionality (GUI front
end, new features, etc.) while retaining, if necessary, the "look and feel" of
the original (to minimize the cost of new documentation and retraining), and
(3) just about anything else that no one else seems to want to do for "the
desperate or daring", and (3), partnering with clients to develop vertical-market
application solutions for them that are "evolved" into program products for the
industries in which they compete. (This may sound far grander thn it is, and
I'm not trying to "gild the lily"; most of the projects I ork on are pretty
small, judging from what I'm deducing from the posts of others, and I often work
as a "team of one"). I believe that what successes I have achieved in these
endeavors is largely due to the unrelenting application of agile principles, as
many of my clients are "resource constrained" (i.e., money, time, personnel,
experience, etc.) and can't afford o tolerate long drawn-out development
projects.
What continues to surprise me about the agile approach to software
development is the sort of "Woodstock phenomenon" it has engendered: like the
famous/infamous concert, substantially more people report having "been there" than could
have been physically contained by the site, many developers purport to agile
principles than actually might. Of coure, there's no harm in that, except that
many project tht fail are often purported to have been "agile" when in fact
they were not, which contributes to its reportedly slow rate of acceptance. One
developer actually told me straight out that he found that the agile approach
works best for him after all of the requirements are gathered, analyzed and
the system architecture pretty much completely defined.
Go figure.
Regards,
Pete
For more information about AM, visit the Agile Modeling Home Page at www.agilemodeling.com
--^----------------------------------------------------------------
This email was sent to: [email protected]
EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?bUrKDA.bWnbtk.Z2NtYS1h
Or send an email to: [email protected]
TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE!
http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html
--^----------------------------------------------------------------
lmpx.com only provides a reader for public news (NNTP) servers. It is not
affiliated with the servers or forums shown here and is not responsible for
the content of articles, which is written by their respective authors.