Jump on in: News from the Agile2009 Conference

by Beth Cohen

Judging from the wildly enthusiastic international crowd of 1,400 attending the Agile2009 conference in Chicago, Illinois, USA, last week, XP, Scrum, and agile software development methodologies are becoming more mainstream. After years of pilot projects, agile is finally gaining acceptance as a legitimate approach to software development in the business community. While the conference sessions were still heavily weighted toward practical topics such as how to build agile test beds, embedded software development, and the fine points of pair programming, many popular sessions expanded the scope to include business and operational concerns, such as workflow, infrastructure, metrics, and building agile organizations and culture.