Peter Coffee, eWEEK's Technology Editor for over a decade, has 23 years experience in evaluating information technologies and practices as a developer, consultant, educator and internationally published author and industry analyst.
On the eve of his keynote address at Agile2006, Coffee reflected on an advanced copy he'd received of the Digital Focus survey of the state of Agile practice, and blogged about some danger signs he observed.
Coffee affirmed, from his own experience, survey conclusions like this:
Coffee cites the following attitudes as worrisome, symptoms of serious organizational dysfunction which will not evaporate with the application of a methodology:
On the eve of his keynote address at Agile2006, Coffee reflected on an advanced copy he'd received of the Digital Focus survey of the state of Agile practice, and blogged about some danger signs he observed.
Coffee affirmed, from his own experience, survey conclusions like this:
"Participants reported the greatest value provided by Agile development is the ability to respond to change. This is exhibited in the form of challenges in managing scope, increasing the speed of delivery, responding to unclear business requirements, or responding to changing requirements."But then, he wondered, "Why isn't Agile development becoming so much the norm that it no longer needs a name?" His observation, while looking at survey results: The factors that make an organization a tough sell for agile development seem to be precisely the factors that are likely to make development a problem for that organization, by any means.
Coffee cites the following attitudes as worrisome, symptoms of serious organizational dysfunction which will not evaporate with the application of a methodology:
- Organization lacks internal experience and/or skills
- Requires too much business involvement of organization
- Projects are too big for agile practices
- Projects are too technically complex for agile practices
- Distrust of agile practices for mission-critical systems