An article that was inspired by a comment, “Agile consultants ruined the software group I work in“. It’s a very well written article and one that is certainly food for thought.
Development of software is about the people, it has to be. Any methodology can be wrapped around any team, but for any of them to work, there has to be some talent, experience and a willingness to part of a team there – especially in technical and project leadership. Without it, the cost is expensive – both in morale and dollars.
Running an Agile project and managing it with scrum has worked considerably better in time and money costs than any waterfall or v-model project in my experience. However, I do believe Agile to some, is a like reading a software agreement – they scroll to the end reading very little, click “Accept”and done. We are now ‘Agile’. These projects fail usually and the methodology and/or people change shortly after.
There are shades of grey in best practices depending on the project. The common theme I’ve noticed is, that for an environment and the teams involved to perform at a high level, there has to be room to maneuver, accepting the fact that there are things that crop up that no one thought about until it’s right there, in front of you. These things happen and looking to blame people or the methodology and swapping some or all, because of perceived failure is like a drug addict looking for the next feel good hit of the dream that all milestones get hit on time, and/or the baby was not ugly in the first place.
Like I said, it is about people. And having watched a group of disparate individuals start a project and turn into a team after a few sprints – and produce great products, I know this approach works. As the article mentions, robots we aren’t.