Path: csiph.com!x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net!newsfeed.hal-mli.net!feeder3.hal-mli.net!newsfeed.hal-mli.net!feeder1.hal-mli.net!border3.nntp.dca.giganews.com!Xl.tags.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!local2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.earthlink.com!news.earthlink.com.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2012 10:50:18 -0600 Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2012 08:50:02 -0800 From: Patricia Shanahan User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.2 (Windows/20060308) MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer Subject: Re: Agile Project Management References: <8b9e9575-e454-4d1b-80aa-f89a4a39b511@t24g2000yqj.googlegroups.com> <4f36f42a$0$281$14726298@news.sunsite.dk> <92d0e832-6c70-4dc6-9c9f-71f588920d36@vv9g2000pbc.googlegroups.com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: Lines: 40 X-Usenet-Provider: http://www.giganews.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 70.230.206.198 X-Trace: sv3-5q7AGEr7yRZ1Bw8tkA1zh8tBf8BPBLl5JckqSDiK9GgDjmPr2txRRVeXWfx3p9UbzwajttGAiD6JUji!UHNm3deUJz9Fwu32KjsP6EFDwkSQut/M1ka2OPhvivIHVE1UFRaiww0bIuwxPGue7akP892UChzu!BqEh1FLwLJN3J9QQAML7urN0Jf5C9E+VN9njR2LzLCV33kE= X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.40 X-Original-Bytes: 3534 Xref: x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net comp.lang.java.programmer:12014 simplicity wrote: > On Feb 12, 9:38 pm, e...@invalid.com (EricF) wrote: >> In article <92d0e832-6c70-4dc6-9c9f-71f588920...@vv9g2000pbc.googlegroups.com>, simplicity wrote: >>> Interesting that when I raised these issues (with examples) during one >>> of the internal seminars on agile, the presented, some "big kahoona" >>> consultant on agile, quickly diverted into a different topic >> I've worked at 5 or 6 places that say they did agile development. They touched >> on aspects of it, but aside from 1 exception, I would say they really were not >> very agile and their processes were a bit of a mess. >> >> Eric > > This is very much my observation as well. The most comical was the > experience in small company. I think the only agile principle > management understood was that "developers working on the project > should seat together". As it was a consulting company with project > span averaging 6-8 months, you can imagine: people being constantly > moved around. My proverbial "straw that broke camel's back" was when > I inherited the desk with no less than 70 empty Coke cans and the > traces of lunches from last 6 months. :-):-) > > However, this particular case notwithstanding, my failure rate is 3 of > 3, yours 5 of 6. With stats like this it is hard to defend something. Has anyone had a successful project that attempted to apply *any* process that sort of management approach? My position is that intelligent choice of project-appropriate techniques works, and works better with a large toolbox from which to pick techniques, but unintelligent imposition of an arbitrary choice of techniques does not work. Sitting together can be useful, especially when a task requires several different types of knowledge, so that a team has to work together almost continuously, rather than dividing up the work and each doing their own piece. It does have costs, and those must be compared to the benefits for a particular project and situation, but isn't that the case for anything? Patricia