The Sharpest Tools in the Shed
Agile developers find index cards, sticky notes can be as valuable as expensive tool suites in maintaining flexibility
October 1, 2006 —
(Page 1 of 7)
Google the words “agile tools” and you’ll scroll through nary a non-IT-related hit. From open-source options to start-ups and consultancies to longstanding ISVs rebranding themselves as agile, the software tool market has assiduously noted the power of agility in the eyes of its consumers.
But here’s a test: Which company outside the software industry has enjoyed increased demand due to agility, without even trying?
If you guessed 3M, you’re right. The maker of sticky notes—interestingly, the company agile consultant Mary Poppendieck modeled her vision of lean software development on—provides many of the paper-based tools agile developers rely on most. Now 3M has come out with sticky, sortable index cards that just may be the next big thing in agility.
A few brains, some cards and a whiteboard—is that really all agile teams need to get by? Conversely, are IT shops in safety-critical or audited industries slowed by their dependence on requirements traceability? Just as agility implies evolutionary product development, agile tool use, it appears, evolves from simple adaptations to complex systems.
U.S. LEADS ‘LEAN’ EFFORT
There’s no small irony in the fact that a movement that began with an emphasis on using IT to improve responsiveness to swiftly changing manufacturing demands should be associated with certain Luddite tendencies among software developers. In the early 1990s, U.S. government efforts to improve on-demand military provisioning and global industrial competitiveness pushed a wide array of companies into creating open standards for manufacturing, allowing parts designed in one locale to be created elsewhere rapidly and efficiently. By the time, nearly a decade later, the concept of lean or just-in-time manufacturing had catalyzed the software industry by way of the Agile Manifesto of 2001, the emphasis had moved toward highly social approaches to developing applications.
Indeed, the first Agile Manifesto value, “Individuals and interactions over processes and tools,” rallied developers to throw off the shackles of prescriptive and expensive application development tools. Many of the practices described by Kent Beck in “Extreme Programming Explained” were aimed at eliminating defects by writing tests before code—the opposite of the rampant “code and fix” mentality lamented by Steve McConnell in “After the Gold Rush: Creating a True Profession of Software Engineering.” And at such sites as Symantec’s American Fork, Utah, campus, Extreme Programming adherents boasted about the fact that they no longer needed debuggers or fancy IDEs.
Share this link: http://sdt.bz/29625
Most Read Latest News Blog Resources
Zeichick’s Take: Radio moves from analog waveforms to digital packets
Streaming radio highlights the need for streaming applications to be designed to take up as little bandwidth as possible
|
|
Taking enterprise architecture to the business side
Startup Corso is bringing out a cloud-based planning platform that ties into business plans
|
|
Appcelerator Acquires Cocoafish to Add Instant Mobile Cloud Capabilities to its Industry Leading Titanium Platform
Appcelerator Offers Messaging, Social, Location and Storage Mobile Cloud Services to All Mobile App Publishers
|
|
ComponentOne Releases a Collection of 40+ UI Widgets Powered by HTML5 and jQuery
ComponentOne has announced the 2012 release of Wijmo: a kit of UI widgets for HTML5 and jQuery development
|
Taking enterprise architecture to the business side
Startup Corso is bringing out a cloud-based planning platform that ties into business plans
|
|
Top five apps to manage your workload
Web applications offer new ways to track your “to-do” lists
|
|
Not so fast when it comes to testing in the cloud
Developers face outsourcing, virtual lab management and mobile devices as obstacles
|
|
Xceed releases UX-focused suite for Microsoft’s WPF
"Blendables" helps match user experiences to developer visions
|
Are you at risk for burnout?
Burnout is a severe problem and it can strike at any time. Here's how to tell if you are nearing the edge.
|
|
Agility, mom, and apple pie
If we're to evaluate the state-of-the-art in software development, we should start with the values espoused in the Agile Manifesto.
|
|
RIM woos developers with free tablet
How do you get more apps ported to the BlackBerry PlayBook? By giving every developer a free tablet, of course!
|
|
GitHire: Use Headhunters to Find Your Perfect Programmer
Are you a hiring manager tired of scouring the job boards? Check out this new service that will find 5 people interested in your jobs.
|
The Hidden Costs of Software Licensing
Moving beyond paper-based software licensing to more flexible, software-based licensing is a business decision. There is a growing trend tow...
|
|
Case Study: You May Need a Development Mechanic
As a contractor for a major financial player in Germany, SOBEGE, a German-based consultancy specializing in embedded IT and web services, wa...
|
|
Ensuring Software Quality at a Major International Bank
One of the world’s leading international banks has adopted AgitarOne technology for delivering generated unit tests for their Java software...
|
|
Load Testing Adobe Flex Applications
Adobe Flex applications may be different from applications you’ve worked with before. For classic HTML web applications, the server does all...
|