Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

It seems that everyone is using an Agile process these days. There really isn’t anything new in Agile. And, in some cases, Agile can slow the delivery of software to users.

What? Agile be slow? Yes, Agile processes can slow the delivery of software to users.

Twenty years ago, I worked in a lab where we delivered software updates to users in a day – sometimes an hour. The users didn’t have to wait 30 days for a sprint to end.

A user would come to me with a requirement. I would take them to the right programmer (the programmer who knew that part of the software best), the programmer would change the code, someone else would test it, and the software was on the system for the user to use.

We didn’t have an official backlog of user desires, we didn’t have a burn down chart, we didn’t have a daily meeting, we didn’t have all the wonderful things that good Agile organizations have.

We had some competent people who worked well together.

I am not disparaging Agile; I am not disparaging the concepts behind Agile.

Before Agile, there was a lot of wasted effort and failed software projects. There were also pockets of people who were competent and worked well together.