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AGILE

                                             August 10, 2010

Ah, it seems like just yesterdecade that
"Extreme Programming" was the latest
programming methodology fad...

  What a cool name, eh?
  It just screams young,                      We deskbound computer nerds need
  dangerous and reckless.   And "dated        stuff like this to convince us
                            on arrival".      to work like madmen on dubious
                                              projects no one in their right
  It's primary result seems to                mind will care about in a few
  have been the creation of an                years.  If that long.
  entire family of "agile"
  practices... all weighted                         BIATHLON
  down by clumsy jargon.

  What's the waterfall again?
  And why do we call it that?       Both of these suggest
  Oh, to distinguish it from        to me being lost at
  the whirlpool, which is           sea and in danger of    And "scrum" says
  supposed to suggest "cycles".     drowning.               to me "prepare
                                                            to be bruised".
    Agile-types love to debate
    how many meetings you
    should have, and how short    And whether your manager should
    a release cycle, and so on.   tell you to write tests, or
                                  whether your team deserves the
    Important parameters          freedom to discover all on
    to standardize, no            their own that, yes, they
    doubt, and yet I have         really do need to be writing
    the odd feeling you           tests.  (I'm not making this up.)
    just need to flip a
    coin and move on.


   But still...

   It's not hard to come up with a grab bag
   of notions loosely associated with
   XP/agile that are probably of merit:

   Top-down design-first/implement-second ("waterfall")
   means a big hit in development efficiency.

   Iterative processes tend to work better
   ("whirlpool"), slowly refining your ideas of
   what you can do while you're doing it.

   You should get feedback from users (aka
   "the customer") *during* development.

   Rather than detailed code specs, use "stories':
   brief verbal sketches of something you'd like       NARRATIVE_DRIVE
   to see the code do.

      I read an interview where someone was advocating
      using just a handful of index cards when you need     Myself, I would
      to discuss software design... he added that you       probably use a
      should *never write anything on the cards*.           set of wooden
                                                            blocks.
      If you can't remember what the cards
      represent, you should simplify further.                 Yeah, they
                                                              have letters
                                                              on them, but
                                                              I don't think
                                                              they'd distract
                                                              too much.



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