Adam Kalsey

This is the blog of Adam Kalsey. Unusual depth and complexity. Rich, full body with a hint of nutty earthiness.

Software Management

Agile gloss

13 Sep 2002

New Architect’s October issue has an article called Scaling Agile Methods about using aglile development methods like Extreme Programming (XP) in large development teams. The commonly held belief is that agile methods only work well when a project has a small (less than 12 or so) development team, and this article attempts to refute that.

It wold be interesting to see a case study of a project where agile methods were successfully employed on a large project, but this isn’t it.

The author used XP on a development project, but he only provides three paragraphs about the success of the project, an one of those is a simple rehash of the goals of XP.

In order to prove that XP works, the author relies on anectdotes. "Based on my experience, agile methodologies do work. In fact, I’ve found them to be just as effective as traditional ones." Why would a development team try a new methodology that is unproven in large projects if it is only "just as effective" as the one they are already using?

He also presents arguements as fact with no supporting eveidence. "If you’re moving to a new technology platform or your project calls for fluid requirements, these older [traditional development] methods aren’t suitable." That may come as a surprise to development teams that have successfully performed these tasks using traditional methods.

Has anyone seen a case study or paper on the use of a particilar agile methodology on a large project?

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