Re: Work to the risk was Re: Inspections Was: RE: [AM] ANN: Mashing Deadly My

In a message dated 2/26/2004 12:19:56 AM Pacific Standard Time, 
[email protected] writes:
Of course, my personal belief is that we should *always* use
appropriate methods. 
Since my intoduction to this forum several months ago, one of the things that 
struck me regarding the comments of new participants regarding "agility" in 
general and agile modeling in particular was an expectation that there was a 
well-defined step-by-step "formula" that, properly applied, would lead to 
universal success in developing software. This expectation has been the cause of 
much debate, and in several cases, somewhat heated exchanges, regarding just what 
constitutes agilility. Your comment regarding "appropriate methods", above, 
seems to strike at the heart of this issue. For some time now, I have suspected 
that the form of agility implied in the principles of the Agile Manifesto, 
and described and embraced by the contributors heer, requires either a fairly 
extensive body of development experience or a substantial "leap of faith" in 
order to understand that agility and appropriate methods are essentially two side 
of the same coin. This is not necessarily intuitively obvious to the 
uninitiated, particularly those earnestly searching for a better way to build 
software, and it may account for many of the misunderstandings that have arisen on 
this subject. 

I may not be the brightest bulb in the box, so I could be way off base here, 
but it seems to me that there seems to be some minimum level of knowledge or 
experience required to understand and appreciate the general concept of 
agility. I am sure that many of us have been called upon to describe agility, and it 
sometimes feels to me like I'm trying to describe the Golden Rule to the 
infidels; that is, I uually have to provide a brief summary of the history of 
sofware development to put the concept of agility in an appropriate context before 
the light bulb overhead gets turned on. Is my experience unique, or am I just 
an inadequate spokeperson for agility? How do the rest of you hep others to 
understand agility and its benefits? 

Comments, please...

Regards,

Pete

For more information about AM, visit the Agile Modeling Home Page at www.agilemodeling.com
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