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Comments: 193 +- Book Reviews: Becoming Agile on Monday November 16, @10:29AM
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samzenpus
on Monday November 16, @10:29AM
from the read-all-about-it dept.
from the read-all-about-it dept.
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books
IraLaefsky writes "The appropriately titled Becoming Agile: In An Imperfect World by Greg Smith and Ahmed Sidky offers a realistic path to the family of Agile practices which have become prevalent in software development in the last few years. This family of approaches to software development has been widely adopted in the past decade to replace the traditional Waterfall Model of software development, described in a 1970 article by Winston W. Royce 'Managing the Development of Large Software Systems.' The Waterfall Model stressed rigid functional and design specification of the program(s) to be constructed in advance of any code development. While the this methodology and other early formal tools for Software Engineering were infinitely preferable to the chaos and ad-hoc programming-without-design practices of early systems, these first tools ignored the fallibility of initial interviews used to construct initial design and often resulted in massive time and cost overruns." Read below for the rest of IraLaefsky's review.
| Becoming Agile: In An Imperfect World | |
| author | Greg Smith and Ahmed Sidky |
| pages | 408 pages |
| publisher | Manning |
| rating | 9/10 |
| reviewer | IraLaefsky |
| ISBN | 1933988258 |
| summary | provides the tools to introduce and adapt agile practices in a variety of corporate cultures |
The Agile methodologies which are described in this text stress an iterative approach to software development, with the continuous involvement of users (or user surrogates). These iterations consist of several week periods (to at most two month intervals) where a concise partial design requirement, story, is translated to a complete executable version of the program which can be demonstrated to users, for their immediate and anticipated criticism and controlled feature addition. These practices have undergone various codifications since the Agile Manifesto of 2001. Among the more popular Agile Menthodologies are Extreme Programming (XP), Crystal Clear and Scrum.
In describing these development methodologies this practical handbook takes an approach sorely needed in descriptions of Information Technology (IT), it assumes that the purchaser is considering employing the technologies described within the context of a real corporate environment with existing strengths and limitations, an existing approach to the problems addressed, and cultural biases concerning the adoption of new technologies. This approach enables the book to be used as a virtual consultant, taking the experiences described in a case study based upon the authors' advisory experience, and the test of organizational readiness for adoption and needs for customization of the technology as true guideline for introducing these practices in culturally and technology appropriate fashion. During the mid 1980s I served as an internal consultant at a large insurance firm, at the time we were considering the introduction of Expert Systems methodologies into the IT organization. I purchased several handbooks which were intended to introduce this new from academia technology to companies in the financial industries. Most of these books did an adequate job of describing the nature and basis of this technology to IT and Business Analysts trained in existing technology. But, all of the available books failed to chart a path for an IT organization with traditional development practices to successfully migrate to the new technology and appropriately translate this technology for business management. Becoming Agile, introduces a new effective method for describing the risks, benefits and appropriate adaptation of a radically new technology to organizations with existing successful and unsuccessful software development practices and a particular business culture.
Important features of this guide include the Sidky Agile Measurement Index (SAMI) which provides guidelines in moving your particular organization to Agile practices, the non-religious presentation of multiple Agile methodologies and approaches (specifically XP and SCRUM), appendices on organizational readiness assessment, phased development within the Agile context, an overview of the Agile process (suitable for business presentation), and the author forum. The importance of recognizing that new technology methodologies such as Agile Practices must be introduced and carried out in the context of a specific organization, with its own strengths and foibles, cannot be overemphasized. Step-by-step directions and illustrations are given for choosing an appropriate target application for the initial introduction of these methodologies, and each stage of implementation and their possible stumbling blocks are carefully outlined.
That it provides the tools to introduce and adapt these practices in a variety of corporate cultures, with varying degrees of technical sophistication is an invaluable advantage over other Agile texts and will save the organization many thousands of dollars in consulting fees. My only minor nit with this exceptionally fine introduction to Agile Methodologies is that some of the illustration appear to have been formatted in PC-based tools such as VISIO and PowerPoint and require a bit of squinting to study in the smaller book format. With this trivial exception I would award this excellent guide and virtual consultant, an almost perfect nine out of ten review, and recommend it to any organization seeking to intelligently adopt Agile Practices.
The print edition is available at all retailers, while the ebook can be purchased exclusively through the Manning E-Book Storefront.
You can purchase Becoming Agile: ...in an imperfect world from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
In describing these development methodologies this practical handbook takes an approach sorely needed in descriptions of Information Technology (IT), it assumes that the purchaser is considering employing the technologies described within the context of a real corporate environment with existing strengths and limitations, an existing approach to the problems addressed, and cultural biases concerning the adoption of new technologies. This approach enables the book to be used as a virtual consultant, taking the experiences described in a case study based upon the authors' advisory experience, and the test of organizational readiness for adoption and needs for customization of the technology as true guideline for introducing these practices in culturally and technology appropriate fashion. During the mid 1980s I served as an internal consultant at a large insurance firm, at the time we were considering the introduction of Expert Systems methodologies into the IT organization. I purchased several handbooks which were intended to introduce this new from academia technology to companies in the financial industries. Most of these books did an adequate job of describing the nature and basis of this technology to IT and Business Analysts trained in existing technology. But, all of the available books failed to chart a path for an IT organization with traditional development practices to successfully migrate to the new technology and appropriately translate this technology for business management. Becoming Agile, introduces a new effective method for describing the risks, benefits and appropriate adaptation of a radically new technology to organizations with existing successful and unsuccessful software development practices and a particular business culture.
Important features of this guide include the Sidky Agile Measurement Index (SAMI) which provides guidelines in moving your particular organization to Agile practices, the non-religious presentation of multiple Agile methodologies and approaches (specifically XP and SCRUM), appendices on organizational readiness assessment, phased development within the Agile context, an overview of the Agile process (suitable for business presentation), and the author forum. The importance of recognizing that new technology methodologies such as Agile Practices must be introduced and carried out in the context of a specific organization, with its own strengths and foibles, cannot be overemphasized. Step-by-step directions and illustrations are given for choosing an appropriate target application for the initial introduction of these methodologies, and each stage of implementation and their possible stumbling blocks are carefully outlined.
That it provides the tools to introduce and adapt these practices in a variety of corporate cultures, with varying degrees of technical sophistication is an invaluable advantage over other Agile texts and will save the organization many thousands of dollars in consulting fees. My only minor nit with this exceptionally fine introduction to Agile Methodologies is that some of the illustration appear to have been formatted in PC-based tools such as VISIO and PowerPoint and require a bit of squinting to study in the smaller book format. With this trivial exception I would award this excellent guide and virtual consultant, an almost perfect nine out of ten review, and recommend it to any organization seeking to intelligently adopt Agile Practices.
The print edition is available at all retailers, while the ebook can be purchased exclusively through the Manning E-Book Storefront.
You can purchase Becoming Agile: ...in an imperfect world from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
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Methodology fads (Score:5, Insightful)
Every decade or generation management and process fads change. All of them have their faults and all of them have their benefits, and none are ideal for all situations.
I wonder what the fad of the 2020s will be?
Re:Methodology fads (Score:4, Insightful)
I see changes in the software development process as more of an evolution than a fad. The needs of management and end users change, so the process changes with it.
Parent
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That would make you a programmer. A software developer [docforge.com] is often involved in more than just programming.
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That is a "throw it over the wall" approach which time and countless failed programs have shown *DOES NOT WORK*.
Re:Methodology fads (Score:4, Insightful)
That's the point when the process needs to back off and let stuff happen.
If you think you can just ignore all the design work when you start coding I'm afraid you are not going to be very successful. You seem to have a 'go away and I'll get you the answer' approach which is the same as throw it over the wall.
Good developers need to learn how to work cooperatively in teams. Too many times I see people that *could* be good developers but have this isolationist attitude and dont want to be involved in the big picture.
Parent
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I don't know, but 6 sigma has gone retro here. Here's to 2020 being late 90's dot com chaos!
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I don't know, but 6 sigma has gone retro here. Here's to 2020 being late 90's dot com chaos!
Yeah, this time i will cash in and charge six figures for the 2020-equivalent of HTML!
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They even seem to come with the weird religious rhetoric, too, promising that if only you embrace $Methodology, your life will change. Well, except the ultra-oppressive ones like CMMI: it demands that you accept CMMI or be destroyed.
It seems to be a fact of life that these things are going to float around, so I guess what makes sense is figuring out which ones are relatively better or worse, and what ideas from them are relatively useful or not. As (excellent tech blogger) YosefK put it [yosefk.com] in a review of an Ex
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I wonder what the fad of the 2020s will be?
I'm almost certain that the language fad will be functional programming, unless of course something even bigger and sloppier comes along to counteract Moore's Law. The management and process fad? Who cares? Except for a lucky few, we'll all have to nod and smile and suck it up until the next silver bullet comes along.
Re:Methodology fads (Score:5, Insightful)
The only Agile Programming method is to trust your workers, and give them what they need to get it done.
My company said it was agile, but every process was waterfall with the names changed. More gates, more reviews, more layoffs and offshoring.
I could support my application 100% and have time for other development, but instead I have to train other teams (10 people at least at this point) and produce enough documentation that they can fire me when I get too expensive and hire a homeless guy to replace me.
Trust your coders, give them access they need. Then, when someone inevitably breaks your rules, hold them accountable. That's the key. Don't change the rules for everyone so you can answer "What have you done to prevent this from happening again?" The answer should be "We enforced our current policies, the person has had all access stripped, then terminated, and a reminder sent out."
I can't do agile development if .NET has built-in limitations which require a change request to an offshore server admin support group that doesn't even work my hours. So I sit idly until the workday ends, wake up the next morning and realize the sa team wants more information. I just bypass the whole thing and develop locally, but I can't always demo locally. If I could configure the box myself, I'd be able to document what I did so I can make an implementation guide, but I can't even do that - the dev servers are locked down. I am expected to document steps that I can't perform myself, nor test. That adds time to development.
Trust your coders, work closely with them, and get something working. Then plan for changes, because there will be design updates as well as requirement updates.
It all boils down to hiring people who can code either quickly or generically, so that when something changes they can respond - and then allowing them to respond.
Parent
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Fully agree with you on this. What the Agile process has shown me so far is that its a very fragile process, where the management want to break down the developers to the point of making replaceable parts of even the very best programmers. Add the war room to the mix, keep poking developers to "what I did yesterday, what I'm going to do today, whats holding me back" daily even when there is no work planned, so that you keep every one in check, all the time. Every job in the world has some slack built in,
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We're a small company, so we can probably get away with it, but I require my coders to show up twice a week to the office for regular meetings and then be available if something comes up. All our code is either in SVN or Git repositories depending on the project. (Our Java team likes SVN, the web development team likes Git. Usually one isn't dealing with the other). We just come up with a list of milestones and due dates and then I get out of their way. Once a new feature is added, we test for bugs, an
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I must agree. As a Project Manager my boss has sent me off to several of the "Agile" development workshops and I came to the same conclusion I do about most buzzwords - it's a solution looking for a problem. Too many PHB's walking around looking for a way to keep themselves busy.
Waterfall (Score:2, Interesting)
Waterfall crushes a piece of my soul every day.
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Oh, THAT strawman (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, right, yet another valiant effort at demolishing a strawman of the Waterfal Model... which never really meant the carricature opposed by the "agile" crowd, and wasn't applied that way. Ever heard of iterations? Right. Apparently the agile crowd still never heard that anyone else uses those.
Re:Oh, THAT strawman (Score:5, Informative)
I'm uncertain as to what waterfall means where you work...but despite loud protestations from several developers...where I work, it means precisely the caricature that we Agile folks oppose. And it's basically mandated that a formal, pre-planned, no-iterations "waterfall" approach is used, as per the guidelines pushed by PMI and CMMI. I wish you were right...but it ain't a strawman.
Parent
Actually, yes, it's a strawman (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, I hope you realize that -- since it's referenced even in the review here -- the 1970 article by Royce which described it (albeit not actually using the term "waterfall") was a description of a dysfunctional process which doesn't work right for software. That article wasn't a formalization of the waterfall model, but a critique of it. (And a modification to something that works better, at that.)
It's not even the only one. Several authors and books exist about making software development work, _long_ before there even was such a thing as the XP manifesto or the word agile.
So at the very least we have the first strawman: that we needed the Agile crowd to come along and wake us up to the fact that the waterfall doesn't work. It was widely known that it doesn't work, at _least_ since 1970. You know, the fun times before microprocessors and personal computers and when even Unix was still just a cutesy personal experiment.
The model actually doesn't come from computing but from RL construction and partially manufacturing. That's the place where the costs get prohibitively higher if you discover a mistake after you built the whole building. And while _some_ misguided MBAs have always tried to treat programming like a generic assembly-line operation -- including using methodologies like this one, which are utterly inapropriate -- it's hardly been the standard, de facto and de jure methodology in computing. The pretense that somehow if you're not doing a crap^H^H^H^H agile job, you're one of those using the waterfall model (never mind that it was discredited for 3 decades already) is the strawman that irks me the most. Yes, some islands of insanity exist. You have my sympathy if you work for one. No, it's not the standard in programming. No, we don't need a wakeup call or extreme methodologies to know it doesn't work. We knew that already. At least since 1970.
And in reality even the places which go somewhat waterfall-y... well, let's just say that any place that's ever had a change request or made a version 2.0 of a product, essentially has iterations. Not the best form of them, to be sure, but it is iterations. Requirements change after code has been written too.
Parent
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If your CMMi consultants are pushing waterfall as official CMMi canon, you might want to find yourself a new batch of CMMi consultants. CMMi is about being able to measure and manage your work, not about using a specific methodology to do so.
But a lot of it depends on the size of the company and the average project size. If I have an estimated 2-month effort and 4 programmers (all internal), it's unlikely in the extreme I'm going to deal with the complexity of an iterative model. Plain old waterfall fits
Re:Oh, THAT strawman (Score:5, Informative)
Shows what you know about PMI then. In fact, right up front in PMI's definition is that a project is "progressively elaborated."
Both are perfectly at ease with an iterative model, simply noting that
1) each iteration is itself a project (or at least: a project phase which requires most of the same initiation, planning, execution, monitoring & control and closing disciplines as a whole project)
2) if you're changing your mind as you go along, there's a real Risk that you'll have to rework earlier outputs to suit later decisions, with impacts to some or all project constraints.
But of course, handling Risk within a mature framework - like PMI's - you'll be able to assess this against the Risks of not doing this, and understand which - in any given situation - is the better option.
In fact, I'm still trying to see one Agile practise that is unique and couldn't be applied to any other project:
* Daily standup meetings? Check
* Ongoing stakeholder involvement? Check
* Defining tests as a way of validating Quality (ie that the product meets requirements)? Check
* Delivering end to end working software each release/iteration? Check
* Late changes in requirements? Check, but each one has a real decision about whether the impact of it is worth the benefit
* Trust of the individuals & Self-Organising teams? Check - good old McGregor's Theory of Y (as described in PMBoK)
* Co-location? Check
And far too often, I've seen Agile used as an excuse for cowboy coding and sheer laziness in producing any documentation (try getting your AMS team to support a complex system and diagnose a production outage based on Googlechat records); I've seen developers rush for it as a simple power grab (but hey, everyone thinks they should be in charge), which is slightly better than rushing for it because it's trendy; I've seen Agile projects swallow 10s of millions of dollars with no business benefit (and yes, I've seen waterfall projects do the same).
While Agile is a particularly useful approach when dealing with customers who genuinely can't know their destination until they're along the track of discovery, and so evolving requirements within the project lifecycle are really called for (User Interfaces being a major example), generally it's not development's responsibility to cover up for customers' failure to plan and decide.
And to anyone who's done a few Agile projects with teams of 5, or 10, or 50... come back and boast when you've done something *hard*. As the classic book on the PMP exam says: it tests from the perspective of a large project, that involves 200 people from many countries, takes at least one year, has never been done before in the organisation and has a budget of US$100m or more.
When you've done that kind of project, come back and complain about PMI's methodology.
Parent
Ah well... (Score:2, Funny)
The first step to becoming agile (Score:5, Funny)
Put down the Cheetos, lard-ass.
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Here are a few criticisms... (Score:5, Informative)
of agile software development.
http://www.softwarereality.com/lifecycle/xp/case_against_xp.jsp [softwarereality.com]
http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/09/good-agile-bad-agile_27.html [blogspot.com]
Ah, a new entry (Score:3, Insightful)
A new entry for you Buzzword Bingo cards. The big question is whether "Agile Computing" and "Agile Development" should be separate squares or lumped under "Agile"?
I vote for a single "Agile" square.
Ad hoc is best (Score:5, Insightful)
The best programmers utilize domain specific knowledge gained through years of experience to perform the project design and development tasks that make sense. Trying to generalize one model to fit all domains is doomed to failure. Mainframe COBOL screens work differently than web screens which work differently than low level screen drivers and so on.
If you're starting work in a new domain, no methodology is magically going to make things work. New domains of development require plenty of experimentation and failure. How to best build the project is going to depend on what comes out of that experimentation.
And above all, the most important factor is people. You need smart people. No amount of clever methodology is going to make mediocre programmers create a great project. And for smart people, SDLC usually stands in the way of what they already know works best.
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And above all, the most important factor is people. You need smart people. No amount of clever methodology is going to make mediocre programmers create a great project. And for smart people, SDLC usually stands in the way of what they already know works best.
Well said! In fact, in my 25+ years of programming I have found that methodologies are put in place for PHBs and the talentless. I recall when I took my first programming class the teacher insisted we must write the flowchart first. I found it easier to write the code and reverse engineer the flowchart. To this day I find the formal process to be an anchor weighing down creativity and speed of development.
From one end to the other (Score:5, Interesting)
So we've gone from over-designing systems to under-designing systems.
How about right-designing a system based on the complexity of the scope and the key personnel involved?
Is that crazy?
Agile is monthly waterfall. (Score:2)
Agile Development is a monthly waterfall. You have short cycles, but if anything, there is even MORE up front planning than you would get for each sprint than a waterfall model and precious little time to change if things need to be retasked.
The only real advance in methodologies as of late has been to include automated testing.
Agile development in engineering? (Score:5, Interesting)
But our company software has a large installed base and we need to fix bugs in existing code and somehow graft new functionalities into existing architecture with full backward compatibility for old saved data. And the skill set of coders varies widely. There are just a couple who can even touch isoparametric element stiffness matrix code, to name just one example. I still dont know how agile is going to change the way those two guys work.
I see the advantages of early feedback, and early testing, testing partial implementations etc. But at some point for some kind of code development, Agile may not be the best way to do the code. And I am hoping the training will shed light on where I can use Agile and where I should stay clear of it. I don't want to jump on a band wagon because it is the latest and then have a minor revolt among my padavans.
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Evolutionary Prototyping (Score:3, Insightful)
This approach is horrible for things that have to work perfectly the first time (e.g. rockets to Mars), but for web development seems to be a decent approach. It's also hard to estimate how long something will take, as the requirements aren't known up front. Still, it's what I've been using for years. I don't think I knew what it was called until our organization brought in a consultant to talk about this stuff.
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Yeah, this is the only type of approach that really works at my job. Most of the time the system owners and end users don't *know* what they really want at the start. They have a vague idea of a few things, and thats it. Trying to develop detailed specs has never worked out based on that, they agree to anything you put under their nose then in 6 months realize its all wrong.
Instead, start building based on what you do know. Refine that. Get a lot of feedback. People may not know what they want, but they kno
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Evolutionary Prototyping probably works well with small systems. With large systems, the sheer weight and cost of producing many prototypes is going to get in the way. Just testing a large system is a significant expense.
Another area it probably won't fly is security systems for organizations like NSA. You won't be going back and forth with those guys over some system, they'll simply conclude you have no idea what you are doing and your contract won't be renewed. All of your security mechanisms and overall
Bizarre Covers (Score:2)
Yeah, it's great when you do agile (Score:2)
PyPy - crashing and burning with "agile". (Score:5, Interesting)
The attempt to write a Python implementation in Python, PyPy [codespeak.net], turned into a death march. The project has been underway since at least 2003 (when they had their first "sprint"), never produced a usable system, and the European Union pulled the plug on funding. But the project limps on. There's a released version. It's slower than CPython. There's supposed to be a "just in time" compiler Real Soon Now. (This is try #2 at a JIT, not counting the schemes for outputting Java bytecode and Javascript.) Six years in on a compiler project, and no product.
The PyPy project is very "agile". They have "sprints". They have "flexibility". They have nightly builds. They have mailing lists and trackers. They support multiple output back-ends. They have about 50 contributors. What they don't have is a usable product.
Meanwhile, one programmer produced Shed Skin [blogspot.com], which compiles Python to C++, with a speed gain of 5x to 50x over CPython.
When the problem is dominated by design and architecture, "agile" doesn't help.
Re:PyPy - crashing and burning with "agile". (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah but I'm sure someone here can point to hilarious failures of any methodology, or tool, or language.
Let's face it, software sucks. Writing software is hard.
Parent
Oh and the second agile dogma is stupid (Score:2)
Agile and embedded systems? (Score:3, Interesting)
Who here has actually used Agile for embedded systems work? What were your experiences?
How to turn your skilled employees into cogs (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the appeal with agile development is that it removes any barriers that programmers might have, such as rigid milestones, etc, and basically allows management to do what they want in terms of setting goals. It also is appealing to management because the knowledge sharing implies that they can get rid of their most expensive employees after a period of time (once the knowledge has dispersed). Specialized knowledge is an anathema to management, as it means that you have to pay that person more, and it's critical to the business, it's harder to fire them.
We have to evaluate agile based on it's real world results, not what the books describe. In the real-world, agile creates a very high-pressure work environment, where personal space is non-existent, everyone is watching you, and your work is constantly on display. This pressure can produce productivity gains but I would say that in the long run these gains aren't sustainable. I think agile is a very poor fit for your average introvert, which, imagine that, describes most programmers very well. What I believe will happen is that over time the better developers will move to a work place where things aren't quite so agile.
In the mean time, throwing out such ideas as design first, is going to cost us, big time. I think that software quality will drop, but it won't be obvious, as "quality" and "productivity" aren't things that are easily measurable. Often times, managers walk through a room, and if they see a bunch of people typing away or debating some design issue, then they see that busyness as productivity. No, I think the drop in productivity will become apparent when non-agile competitors clean their clocks, but then it will be too late.
Re:How to turn your skilled employees into cogs (Score:5, Insightful)
Very true.
The biggest surprise I had in my professional life was when I was stuck on a particular problem. Completely stuck. So I tried doing other stuff in the mean time. Then I rand out of stuff to do. Posted on newsgroups and forums, but still no answers.
So I asked my boss if he had anything else I could do, while waiting. "Go play solitaire, read a book, go for a run. But not too far, and keep your cell on you if we need you."
He knew that some things cannot be forced. So I got paid to sit on my ass and read books for two days until the answer popped into my head. Sometimes the best way to be productive is to just sit back, relax and do nothing.
Parent
Re:How to turn your skilled employees into cogs (Score:4, Interesting)
If anything, Agile requires high quality developers to be very successful: Since the design process is diluted, you can't get away with having one or two people that run the show technically and a bunch of drones: Bad developers that can't shape up throw a wrench into the system, and send quality down to the toilet.
An agile system where the developers are actually talented raises their skill levels as they go along, and it can be very rewarding to everyone involved. Eventually management can just set them loose on a project, knowing not just that the end result will be good, but that most issues with requirements will be dealt with before they become a serious problem.
If anything, the problems I've had getting Agile implemented is getting management to accept the budget issues that come from leaving behind a model of two very good developers/architects and a bunch of bums paid a pittance.
Parent
The users are the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Me: Here's the prototype. It's black and white, but the finished product will be in full color.
Them: This menu item is supposed to be green.
Me: That's because the prototype is in black and white. We're just trying to get the text and spacing correct
Them: That item is supposed to be red...
Managing user's expectations during the prototype phase can be a full-time job. (:-(
Rational (Score:2)
The idea is to start writing code now. Write the code, make sure your concepts work - and before it's been written into a budget and had time allocated to it. With each iteration of the development process, you can bring together more code and mo
Agile is good for GUI/web projects (Score:3, Insightful)
Scrum has one good point - show your code to your customer often and apply his comments. But that works only for GUI or web. I cannot imagine that in, say, medical software. For instance, one of my colleagues had to optimize crucial piece of code (some heavy math for CAT scanner). It took him several months. Only thing he could say to the customer was like "it is now two times faster" or "it is now 3.45 times faster". Not something you can really get some useful feedback on.
In another company, we were supposed to do a project for GE, and there was some serious GUI there, but their office was some several thousands miles from us and I really didn't know how we would make regular meetings with them as Scrum required. Also, they had some very elaborate specs and they did not see too much point of Scrum methodology. In some other situation, that project would be a perfect one for Scrum.
PS One thing I don't like with Agile evangelists is that Agile (Scrum in this case) is always right. It's either "what are you doing is not Scrum" or "you did not adapt Scrum to your needs", but its never the problem in Scrum.
Methodology is like cooking (Score:5, Interesting)
Methodology books are like recipe book. Good chefs own many of them, and draw on the knowledge and ideas inside.
But buying and following a cookbook does not make you an expert chef.
Re: (Score:2)
No but if you were a fucking ballerina it would.