You Call This Agile?

JoelonSoftware's most recent piece is about some of the fallacies in "Agile" software and some of the issues within it. We use Agile in some parts of the company, and have had success with that -- that said, there's always the peril that happens when development and other parts of the company have...miscommunication, which sounds like the problem described in Joel's piece.

process first or business first?

[ab762]

Anytime that the process concerns dominate making product, supporting product, doing business, making money, you're in the soup. Any process, methodology, tool, language, whatever can be used to make product. And any process, etc. can become an idolatrous religion. Except Linux, of course.

Re:What universe did this come from?

[MrNonchalant]

Joel owns Fog Creek Software and their jobs page is here [fogcreek.com]. Alternatively there's another small company [google.com] that has similar fantastical working conditions. Both, however, are reputedly hard to get into. If only more companies thought that way. Even free food/drinks is a big step in the right direction that doesn't cost a lot.

Re:What friggin planet is he from....

[bentcd]

Spolsky comes from a world where management realises that in order to get effeciency out of programmers, you need to treat them right and give them the tools that they need for the job. Now, this may be common or it may be rare, but it most certainly is the right way to run a programming shop. So when he says "this is why programmers get . . ." what he really means is "this is why _my_ programmers get and this is why _everyone's_ programmers should be getting . . ."
Of course, he's also a but picky about what he'll accept as a proper "programmer" :-)

Opportunity Cost

[MagikSlinger]

For those of us with even a little economics background recognizes Joel's post as a discussion on opportunity cost [wikipedia.org].

Re:The real advantage to Agile...

[Doctor Memory]

if you are making life-saving heart monitor software, you had better fix a bug the moment it comes up

Dunno, I would think in that case you'd want a more heavy-weight process, with lots of QA and regression testing. I mean, it's not like there's a guy sitting in a doctor's office with a CAT-5 cable plugged into his chest, waiting for you to download PaceMaker 1.1-A...