WHAT YOU SAY?

1998 called; they want their flame war back. Chad and Frans are just having a stupid public spat in the most passive-aggressive way modernity has to offer: via blog. One dev's "necessary sub-standard agile" is another dev's "optimized waterfall". Connor Peterson sums it up brilliantly in his comment to the article:

"My team has about a dozen small to mid to large scale applications that do exactly what the customer wants and are delivered on time (sometimes even against a gantt chart. Shock. Horror. Etc). I don't disagree that following an agile methodology would result in better written and easier to maintain software, but to suggest that it's not possible without a stack of index cards, a whiteboard, a ton of acronyms and pithy sayings is ridiculous. (Red! Green! Refactor!...I'd like to smash someone in the mouth with a stapler for that, but I digress). Software can be and is successfully written without adhering to any ivory tower "manifesto"."

I only disagree with his stapler sentiment. I've exclusively on XP projects for the last 4 years, but I didn't move to it due to a sudden realization that waterfall is a bankrupt enterprise. I worked at a clinical research org that ended up in a pretty common situatation: limited budget, and users who were certain they wanted *something*, but not sure exactly what. We were dyed-in-the-wool waterfall users, not least because of our complicated regulatory obligations, but we took the risk to try something new in order to quickly deliver incremental functionality so we could bail out in months instead of years if things soured. It met with success: we quickly built a working prototype, and v1.0 followed shortly after, then we killed it. We killed it because by delivering incremental functionality early and often, our users learned in 6 mos that some new OTSS and customizations to existing systems would suffice. Our original waterfall plan would have had us learn that same information after about 18 months to 2 years, with all the political baggage that sort of time frame and budget implies. Most of the team went back to waterfall projects, but I was sold on XP and continue to be a TDD-loving fool to this day. I still don't personally like big up front design, but I have enough experience to know that it can work, and that bad requirements will kill you just as dead no matter your methodology.

should read "I've *worked* exclusively"...

Rebuttal, anyone? I, personally, often glean some great info sometimes from "flame wars" between intelligent and experienced developers.

Fr-agile doesn't work either, but who's counting anyways?