Re: The Status of Agile Programming Among Perlmonks?

[talexb]

To me, Agile is a 'development lifestyle' approach. It prefers *not* to have long design meetings or copious amounts of specifications done ahead of time, rather it prefers to get something lean done quickly, and to go from there. It prefers to have short iterations, in order to confirm (or deny) that the project's going in the right direction; it prefers not to have long chunks of time devoted to a big chunk of code, only to discover That's Not What We Want Anymore. It prefers to have developers chat informally and share information, rather than have weekly (or even daily!!!) meetings where people ramble on about where they're at.

Yes, I've been developing software for over 25 years -- so I've seen what works and what doesn't. The best project I ever worked on was my third job out of school; we went from starting work to having a working electromechanical prototype in 7.5 months. And here's how that happened:

• We were given a well-defined problem to solve;
• We were given sufficient funds to solve the problem; and
• We were left alone to get the job done.

It's really quite amazing how productive we were -- it's my guess it would have taken a larger team years to achieve as much. That's one of the high points in my career.

[mrdurtal]

I think you have identified the things that I find important in many processes that involve humans and that actually get important work accomplished.

It is interesting that you a) had something well specified to work on, b) were given the resources to work on the specification, and c) were given the freedom to do your craft.

Where did the leadership, or the leverage, for this come from? Did the client recognise that this was necessary? Was it the something negotiated by the software development team? Most places do not want to give up control over their resources.

[talexb]

Where did the leadership, or the leverage, for this come from?

I guess it was just the way the project was set up. The political machinations in later jobs amazed and disappointed me.

Did the client recognise that this was necessary?

We were doing development work in Canada in order to get a tax break on the investment. The product development work was being done for a company in California; after about 15 months on the job, we were all offered transfers down there.

Was it the something negotiated by the software development team?

Nope. And *I* was the software development team, in charge of both the 6809-based controller, and the PC-based user interface. Ridiculous, I know -- I was too ill-informed to know that what I was doing was impossible, so I just went ahead and did it anyway.