Some Thoughts on Agile

Posted by Rich Crowley in Agile, planning, scrum, waterfall

Here’s some insight I have gleaned from delving into Agile over last little while. While these points might seem overly simplistic, they are key concepts from my perspective:

• Agile is an umbrella term that describes approaches for software development that are quite different from the waterfall approach, which is very linear in concept, that is quite prevalent in many shops
• Scrum and XP (eXtreme Programming) are two approaches that are considered Agile
• Some of the folks whose stuff I’ve been reading about the virtues of Agile are quite critical of the PMI and assert that the PMBOK is a step backwards in project management. This worries me because while I see some wonderful ideas in Agile approaches based on investigation to date, I have also been a practicioner of PMBOK-based project management for many years and while it does have some serious flaws, it is a very useful, valuable guideline for managing projects of many different flavours
• Some criticize Agile approaches as being approaches where little to no planning is done. I think this is wrong and Agile is simply advocating spreading out the planning over the life of the project instead of trying to build a big master plan up front, which is often quite unrealistic.
• Scrum seems to be an approach that is focused on the development phase of a project. By this I mean it isn’t concerned about how projects get prioritized, how scarce resources need to be allocated across competing projects, how some projects simply don’t get staff with “dream teams” of IT and business people etc.
• Here is a good article on the growth in adoption of scrum and how it needs to evolve in order to scale better across the enterprise.