When I've just about had it with open source religious fervor (about how I'm not a "tr00 Java 31337 h4x0r" if my dependencies aren't injected using Spring and if I don't use AOP for my business objects)... when wall street analysts continue to bash upon my employer's head with zeal... when another dev team goes down the path of voodoo instead of engineering... I remember:
The BileBlog hates everyone equally. And I feel much better.
Just finished watching the 1st season finale (got a copy of the BBC airinig). Fantastic. The BBC's website has a great banner for the ep right now; chilling. Doctor Who is the best TV I've seen since Joss Whedon's shows (Buffy, Angel, Firefly) ended. I can't wait for next season.
"Now where was I... Barcelona!"
Probably one of the biggest news stories in music for years: after 24 years apart, Pink Floyd will be reuniting to play the Live 8 concert in Hyde Park, London.
Tickets are lottery only via text/sms to Londoners, closing today. Otherwise I'd be on a plane.... ;)
I caught one of Cedric's entries on XP. Cedric doesn't think XP is used that much, I think it is, though mostly through individual practice adoption. At least he's always maintained a professional, reasonably open attitude when discussing it. On the other hand, a few of Mike Spille's comments struck a nerve with me as being quite reactionary, thus I've written this entry.
In my experience, Agile methods are used widely, and on significant, mission critical projects. I joined BEA consulting recently; every project we lead (in my region, anyway) uses agile approaches to project tracking and prioritization and use many of the XP practices daily. These are projects that run large core systems for multi-billion dollar companies.
There is a disturbing trend among cynics that deride the work of Beck, Fowler, etc. and pan them as the worst lot of opportunistic consultants that have only worked on small scale projects. I think this is an ignorant and generally wrong position, based on a grain of truth. Beck and Fowler have created lasting, large-scale systems running in large enterprises. I personally am aware of some of their past systems, and I know people that maintain them to this day. The grain of truth is that for every Beck or Fowler, there are 50 consultants hawking Agile methods without really getting what they are, how to fit them to a context, and generally causing destruction and chaos in their wake.
These guys have have promoted and articulated some of the most important, practical, and highest impact ideas in programming over the past 15 years:
DeMarco may not reflect Cedric's experience with software because of his product development focus. It certainly reflects my experience. DeMarco is from the enterprise IT crowd - particualrly defence, finance, and telecom. His discussion of how bad IT managers behave is on the money.
Now, I don't think XP is a complete software development method. It's a collection of very effective practices and a process "in the small". I actually feel the best modern book on software project management is Walker Royce's book "Software Project Management: A Unified Framework", which promotes a reasonably agile approach to the UP.
I've consulted, trained, and mentored people that build financial trading systems, customer information or CRM systems, billing systems, risk management systems, e-commerce sites, multi-terabyte data warehouses. And all of these, when I carried a leadership role, used agile practices -- including frequent releases, continuous integration, pervasive testing, variable priorities & scope, etc. They work well, if fitted to the appropriate context. Were they textbook XP? Of course not. Yet XP has had tremendous positive influence on my practices.
My view is that experience alone in the day-to-day pressures of a dev job does not give one the ability to reflect and think about the bigger picture. Some can, and make wonderful developers or team leads. But compared to many full-time developers, consultants -- by that I don't mean contract employees, I mean people hired to impart knowledge -- tend to have more available downtime to reflect. Thus, they can provide an important contribution. Of course, there are 50 useless consultants for every great consultant. But that's the same with programmers in general, and arguably even managers. It has nothing to do with how much time they spend on a system, there's still that 10:1 productivity ratio. The process, XP , or not, will not save you from a lack of knowledge or skills, or bad management. But it can save you from building the wrong system, or prioritizing the wrong things, or debilitating quality problems at deployment.