Mythical Agile Shortcuts |
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| Saturday, 10 November 2007 11:50 |
 Agile
practices such as unit testing, story-based requirements gathering, and pairing
are intuitively appealing ways to achieve higher quality and mitigate risk of
change. At first glance, they even seem
relatively easy to execute: how hard can it be for two people to collaborate,
write small business-oriented requirements, and code tests with each bit of
software? Executing Agile practices can
be quite difficult to perform. For one
thing, they make people uncomfortable because they challenge work habits long
established in IT. For another, they
give the appearance of reducing productivity.
This can lead teams to try to take shortcuts to becoming Agile. Selectively gaining experience with Agile
practices is of value when first taking them on, but denying them completely leaves
the benefits of Agile practices unrealized, and can cause more harm than good
to a development team. Agile
practices such as unit testing, story-based requirements gathering, and pairing
are intuitively appealing ways to achieve higher quality and mitigate risk of
change. At first glance, they even seem
relatively easy to execute: how hard can it be for two people to collaborate,
write small business-oriented requirements, and code tests with each bit of
software? Executing Agile practices can
be quite difficult to perform. For one
thing, they make people uncomfortable because they challenge work habits long
established in IT. For another, they
give the appearance of reducing productivity.
This can lead teams to try to take shortcuts to becoming Agile. Selectively gaining experience with Agile
practices is of value when first taking them on, but denying them completely leaves
the benefits of Agile practices unrealized, and can cause more harm than good
to a development team. Read more >>
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