Month: December 2012

Agile Software Development Will Never Go Mainstream

The headline of this post pains me but it’s true. Real agile approaches to software development will never replace the old and outmoded command-and-control approaches based on waterfall. Scrum, Kanban, XP, Lean, etc. will augment and improve waterfall approaches but never replace them. Here are two reasons for my pessimism. The Safe Choice Have you […]

Plans Change. So Why Bother to Plan?

It’s true. Plans change. They change often. In fact, elaborate, detailed plans will change almost continually. Is it worth the effort to plan? At times, agile software development is criticized because it’s perceived to lack planning. The perception is that developers simply jump in and start writing code. The process of writing code and delivering […]

Don’t Try This On Your Next Project

You hear the words greatness, excellence and leadership quite often in the worlds of business operations and software development. Every person, team, organization and company should strive to be the best — but don’t go too far. What’s too far? Perfection. You don’t need to be perfect — not even close. The results you produce […]

Process Misalignment Is a Leading Cause of Agile Failure

Transitions from traditional software development approaches to agile ones fail occasionally. None of us who try to faithfully practice agile development like to admit it, but it’s true. I’d like to explore one of the key contributors to those failures — process misalignment. Here’s an example of how this happens. Let’s say the business stakeholders […]