In Agile Software Development, Context Really Matters

Mark Mansour over at Agile Bench published a blog post titled “10 Agile Bloggers You Should Know About, But Don’t”. It’s worth reading. (Please note: In the interest of full disclosure, this BrainsLink blog appears in the post.)

A phrase in Mark’s post got my thinking. There are several lists of top agile bloggers around, “many of whom are book authors”. You’d expect book authors to be good writers and thus you’d expect their blogs to be well-written and insightful. Fair enough. But are their agile practices useful in environments like yours? Will their theories prove themselves in your situation? More to the point, will the author’s approach work for you?

You’ll need to answer those questions for yourself. (I won’t openly criticize another blogger unless the other person has specifically agreed to an open debate. CEOs of major corporations are exempted because they expect to be criticized and they have staffs to help them handle it.)

Anyway, I strongly recommend that you learn about agile software development from multiple sources. The approach you select must ultimately work in your situation. Just because an agile approach worked for a particular author, doesn’t mean it will work for you in your current environment.

Context really matters.

I’m a big fan of Scrum and Kanban (especially when combined) though I’d implement them very differently in a small start-up versus a major corporation. Start-ups are easy to change because they aren’t overly invested in anything. Major corporations are hard to change because they have institutionalized much of what they do.

So my thanks go out to Mark for taking the time to read my blog and others like it. I’ve also added Agile Bench to my Tools List. Please check it out. I believe it is the most comprehensive list of agile software development tools anywhere on the Web.