| Are you interested in using an Agile method for developing software? Or
are others lobbying you to approve the use of one? Or is your interest more
casual; perhaps you are merely wondering if an Agile method is worth considering?
Whichever is the case, this book is for you.
I come from the “disciplined process” world. After 13 years at the Software
Engineering Institute (SEI) and a few years running ASK Process, Inc.,
I received a query from a prospect who asked about Extreme Programming
(XP). To answer that query, I began researching XP, and that turned into
research into the Agile methods in general. So began my foray into the Agile
world.
The more research I did, the more I became intrigued with the Agile
methods. Far from being a license to hack (as I, like many of my “disciplined
process” colleagues believed), these methods have some interesting practices
that make a whole lot of sense to me. There are ways in which they are
not so very different from the disciplined methods I have come to respect so
much, like the Capability Maturity Model (CMM)® and the Team Software
ProcessSM (TSP)SM. But there are other ways in which they are dramatically
different — different in ways that solve problems that are so common in
software organizations. I told myself, “There is a lot that we can learn from
the Agile methods!”
The Agile and the disciplined process communities have not gotten along
well. You are likely to hear process-philes disparaging the Agile methods. At
the same time, you are likely to hear the Agilists crying about the terrors of
disciplined process. The truth, of course, is somewhere between those two
extremes. Disciplined processes are good and necessary, as long as they do
what processes should do: support the work of professionals and make them
more effective. And agility — the ability to move quickly and adapt to
changing realities while maintaining one’s balance — is also critical, as long
as it remains focused on meeting the customer’s needs in a way that also
meets the needs of the development organization. |
