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Bad Agile Definitions

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A friend of mine (John Boal) has created a site (The Committee for UN-SCRUM Activities) where he has the ultimate bad definition for the term "Agile":

Agile
1. The ability to use popular buzzwords like "sprint" and "scrum" without having to really change our attitudes or the old-school way you [don't] deliver software.
2. Disconnected non-communicative everyone-for-themselves software & bug development

To this I'll add my own bad definition:

3. Any un-planned, un-documented, un-disciplined software development process.

Of course none of these are really the definitions of Agile, but (sadly) from some of the folks I have worked with and talked to (both inside and outside MS) these are apparently the definitions folks are using.

Brad Wilson has another term defined on his blog:

Scrummerfall. n. The practice of combining Scrum and Waterfall so as to ensure failure at a much faster rate than you had with Waterfall alone.

Brad goes on to make a couple of very good observations about agile and XP that I agree with.

Doing Scrum or XP or anything Agile is hard and requires discipline.  It is also well worth it for a lot of projects (not all, but a wide variety).

If you are trying to adopt Scrum or XP or one of the other Agile methodologies out there, get a coach that has a good track record and listen to them to make sure you are actually doing things by the book for a while (3-6 months minimum).  I was lucky enough to get coaching from folks like Ward Cunningham, Jim Newkirk, and others which kept my team in MSN on track.  Without their help, we would have made a lot more mistakes and the project may not have been as successful.

[Edit: Updated the title of John's website.]

Comments

  • Anonymous
    September 13, 2006
    re: scrummerfall

    Surely this is an improvement over waterfall.  I'd rather fail immediately than later! :)