Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

In many ways, using agile development guarantees success by definition.

I was recently reading of a failed Federal government software program. Of course hundreds of millions of dollars were spent with nothing to show for it. The tale of woe consumed pages.

Then there was one more paragraph that stated, “the government hired another contractor that used agile development and succeeded.”

WOW! That was all that was needed. Agile meant success.

Funny thing about this story: I have read the same story a dozen times. Agile always led to success. That is A M A Z I N G…but I couldn’t leave that alone, I had to ponder it a bit. (Woe is me!)

Agile development is basically:

1. Start with an idea
2. Build a little
3. Learn a little
4. Alter the idea
5. Repeat steps 2. through 4.

At some point, we are at step 5. and declare success. We are HERE and have traveled some Agile path to arrive HERE. Agile succeeded in bringing us HERE. Therefore, when applying Agile, we cannot fail because where ever HERE is, Agile brought us HERE and this is the Agile result.

Perhaps, however, we should have arrived THERE, not HERE. Aha! That statement is wrong. We cannot judge HERE by any other criteria. Those judgement deny the fundamental five steps of Agile stated earlier.

Therefore, by definition, Agile leads to success. No matter what HERE is.

Any questions?