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HOME >> ZEICHICK'S TAKE

Zeichick's Take: Challenges for Agile Development

Bureaucracy. IT inertia. Those are two tough challenges for agile software advocates.

By Alan Zeichick

February 1, 2008 — A few weeks ago, in Are You Ready for Wagile Software Development, I mentioned that that despite all the buzz about agile methodologies like eXtreme Programming or Scrum, many analysts believe that the actual adoption of agile is rather low.

Robin Goldsmith, a test/QA guru (and a popular instructor at STPCon) had some thoughts to share. He wrote me:

What are the chances that implementing Agile is:

Of more interest to IT than to the rest of the organization, which needs to be actively involved in Agile (at least XP), but really may be unlikely to get too wrapped up in what it considers IT's internal concerns and may be unwilling to commit resources full-time just to satisfy IT's periodic demands for rapid responses?
Perhaps very often, for good reason, not perceived as discernibly different from many of the undisciplined practices IT has struggled to overcome?
When done right, demanding greater management effort and skills than the IT folks may have?
Possibly quickly taking on the bureaucratic busywork trappings it is intended to eliminate?

It's hard to disagree with anything that Robin says. Certainly, the streamlined thoughts that led to the Agile Manifesto have become encumbered by numerous overlapping best practices each of which adds more complexity and more constraints. It would be tragic if the real benefits that agile methodologies can offer become so overwhelmed by the details that these practices become what they were intended to replaces overweight and cumbersome.

Alan Zeichick is editorial director of SD Times. Read his blog at ztrek.blogspot.com.

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