Scott W. Ambler: The truth about agility

Yuan Feng Excerpt

Source:UML ChinaOriginal Source:Itbusiness

Some IT personnel are afraid of agility, but the management class should investigate the truth about agility.

Recently, When I chatted with a friend, I was surprised to learn about some new changes being considered in the IT section of his company. I was surprised to find that they chose more cumbersome procedures, even though they do not seem to work at all.
I asked them why they didn't consider using agile methods. The answer is: senior leaders think that the word "agile" is too excited (is a swear word ).

The root cause is that the management does not really understand the Agile Software Process. They were not very familiar with this and were very afraid of agile subordinates. One of the main advantages of agile computing is that it enables
It is difficult for bureaucracy and people who have little or no contribution to the Organization. In the past complex traditional development process: In the process of heavy and document-oriented, these people can well hide in it, while agile methods allow him
They do not have a place to hide, or realize that they must quickly improve their skills.

In this case, those who are afraid of agility may be embarrassed to mislead the management. Unfortunately, leaders often cannot ask for leave of absence from experts (like me) who know the other side of the story. I used
Such as Object-Oriented Software Process and enterprise Unified Process
Traditional software processes, such as agile modeling and agile data, have also been used ).

Leaders of the company were told that agile developers did not model or write documents at all, but the truth is, agile developers perform analysis and design every day, and write high-value documents. They were told that agile developers did their best to develop low-quality systems,
This is exactly the opposite of the fact. They have also been told that agility is a new name for hacker-style development, but they only need to go to www.agilealliance.org to see that this is not the case.
Do you really think industry leaders: Martin Fowler, Bob Martin, Alistair Cockburn, Barry Boehm, and Jim
Are Highsmith advocating hacker-based development?

Agile is an efficient way for everyone to work together, understand all the barriers to communication, and focus on value-added activities to make development more successful. Agile means that everyone works side by side, not everything passes the document. Agility is
Managers actively participate in project management, instead of writing status reports all day long, and use that to monitor what happened. Agility is the developer and stakeholder. Note: Project
Developers from the demand to the final delivery of various people involved in the Development) work out the actual plan together, rather than using a complex Microsoft Project to develop some schedules that are hardly visible.

To be fair, it is difficult to imagine how agile can play a role, especially in traditional organizations where software development is inherently problematic. Misleading agility is even more difficult to help.