Let’s Address the Communications Gap in Agile Software Engineering

by Jim Brosseau

I read with interest Jens Coldewey's recent Advisor (see "An Agile View of Software Engineering," 16 October 2008), as well as some others like it that come from the agile community these days. I agree with the principles of agile, that it can be considered an alternative draft of software engineering. I was at the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference (PNSQC) last week, and listened to Cutter Senior Consultants Ron Jeffries and Chet Hendrickson talk about "Quality Dynamics of Agile Software Development." To summarize, a lot of very strong software engineering concepts, sprinkled with a number of suggestions that these are new ideas and make agile unique and different from "those other approaches" (there is often the suggestion that if the project is bad, it can't be agile). I strongly disagreed with that implication, and fear that it overpowered their more important message that personal skills matter.