InfoQ Homepage Presentations Agile in Practice: What Is Actually Going On Out There?
Agile in Practice: What Is Actually Going On Out There?
37:40
Summary
In this presentation filmed during Agile 2008, Scott Ambler talks about actual data resulting from surveys made during 2006-2008, showing how Agile is perceived and implemented within organizations. Some of the topics surveyed are: the adoption rate of Agile, the effectiveness of Agile approaches, the effectiveness of various techniques.
Bio
Scott Ambler is Practice Leader Agile Development within the IBM Methods group in Ontario, Canada. He has worked in the IT industry since the mid 1980s, with object technology since the early 1990s, and is a recognized leader in the Agile software community. He is a Fellow of the International Association of Software Architects, and an Eclipse Process Framework (EPF) committer. www.ambysoft.com
About the conference
Agile 2008 is an exciting international industry conference that presents the latest techniques, technologies, attitudes and first-hand experience, from both a management and development perspective, for successful Agile software development.
Sep 03, 2008
Community comments
Agile is the new waterfall
by Dan Tines,
Re: Agile is the new waterfall
by Zhu David,
Re: Agile is the new waterfall
by Shih-gian Lee,
Dr. Dobb's link is dead
by Michel Löhr,
Re: Dr. Dobb's link is dead
by Deborah (Hartmann) Preuss,
Excellent! Very enlightening!
by Olivier Gourment,
Re: Excellent! Very enlightening!
by Carlos Ortega,
Re: Excellent! Very enlightening!
by Olivier Gourment,
Re: Excellent! Very enlightening!
by Perry Hertler,
Do you know a report based in a higher number of companies?
by A A,
Re: Do you know a report based in a higher number of companies?
by Deborah (Hartmann) Preuss,
Agile is the new waterfall
by Dan Tines,
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...and somewhat cultish.
Re: Agile is the new waterfall
by Zhu David,
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Why said like that?
Our team management is changing to Agile, is there no difference with waterfall??
Re: Agile is the new waterfall
by Shih-gian Lee,
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There is a difference. But, many organizations use Agile in waterfall way. The sad part is they don't know about it.
Dr. Dobb's link is dead
by Michel Löhr,
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Can this link be fixed?
Excellent! Very enlightening!
by Olivier Gourment,
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Overall, the first half of the presentation is a must-hear for anybody who is wondering why they should care about Agile/Lean.
Scott presents very interesting results of a Dr Dobbs 2008 survey:
THANKS!
PS: I completely missed the point with Modeling and TDD. Can anybody shed some light on this?
Do you know a report based in a higher number of companies?
by A A,
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Having a look to the "Agile Project Success Rates %" slide there are 539 agile projects, which combined with the previous ones gave me a maximum of 125 companies (not hundreds by the way). I might miscalculated it, but if I am true, do you know any other report based on a higher number of surveys, please?
Cheers!
Re: Do you know a report based in a higher number of companies?
by Deborah (Hartmann) Preuss,
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This recent news item points you to a recent, larger survey by VersionOne software. Their sample did include companies NOT using their software.
Re: Dr. Dobb's link is dead
by Deborah (Hartmann) Preuss,
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Sorry, not sure which link you mean. Please email me the url at deborah@infoq.com and I'll get it out there. Thanks!
Re: Excellent! Very enlightening!
by Carlos Ortega,
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I think Scott tried to relate or compare the concepts of Design using UML / Modeling techniques vs the generation of the Design by using Test Driven Development and Refactoring.
The basic idea in this sense is that before agile practices, the design was made by taking the requirements as input, applied some techniques and generate the design (and architecture) using models/diagrams as the main output artifact.
While if you use TDD, it comes that the design emerges as consequence of the continuous application and evolution of doing Unit Testing and Refactoring to the code you write.
Re: Excellent! Very enlightening!
by Olivier Gourment,
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Thank you Carlos. What is Scott's point regarding these practices in real life? Why oppose both techniques?
Specifying tests should not prevent people from creating some models? I agree that tests are more important than models, but models are still very often required as an aid to development, team members coordination and maintenance...
I guess I will have to listen to that part again... :-)
Re: Excellent! Very enlightening!
by Perry Hertler,
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Olivier,
I believe the point Scott was making is that since the majority of professing agilists don't do TDD then TDD is not a good practice and the converse is true for modeling.
The person in audience questioned the validity of the survey because the majority of respondents do detailed documentation. In my opinion, that is a good question and Scott didn't answer it to my satisfaction.
Maybe Scott's point is that the agile practices that are not adopted by the masses should be cut?