Executive Update

The Agile Path

Posted October 14, 2006 | Leadership |

It does us no good to look for enemies in software development, or even victims to be protected from the enemies. When we presume there is a Them that is somehow set against an Us, we are already subtly creating a barrier that creates Them. We are alienating people, which is rarely helpful. We may not realize we are doing it, but the damage (and missed opportunity) is still real. Unfortunately, the early years of the agile movement have been divisive -- full of battle lines of one kind or another. Many of us have artificially divided software development into "agile" and "not agile" -- as if agility were somehow binary.

About The Author
Patrick Wilson Welsh
Patrick Wilson-Welsh has helped bring agile development methods to organizations all over North America, from Fortune 100 companies to small startups. His expertise is in training and mentoring in programmer practices, especially Test-Driven Development and refactoring. Patrick's experience includes the problem domains of mainframe payroll, mainframe database, executive decision support, medical research data collection, PC database, bank check… Read More
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