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... the enterprise stops calling itself an enterprise.
Rick -
While I am certainly not an opponent to Agile techniques being used in other enterprise areas beyond IT, there is a fundamental issue with trying to go "all in" with Agile. You sum it up beautifully with the statement: "Agile thinking requires us to recognize that we cannot plan further than we can see ..."
On it's face, this basic assumption is false. If it were true the world would be a much different place. Skyscrapers, hydro-electric dams, canals, space travel, bridges, etc. all rely on the premise that you can plan for what you can't see. This is especially true when we talk about investment in such ventures.
The fact that Agile proponents have latched on to the idea of the "roadmap" supports the need for Agile to expand its thinking. But since the short-term view and iteration model are necessary to achieve what Agile promises, it seems unlikely that expansion would happen in the first place. Which is why Agile will remain a powerful methodology, but not the only tool in the shed.
Cris Casey
casey@christophercasey.com
While I am certainly not an opponent to Agile techniques being used in other enterprise areas beyond IT, there is a fundamental issue with trying to go "all in" with Agile. You sum it up beautifully with the statement: "Agile thinking requires us to recognize that we cannot plan further than we can see ..."
On it's face, this basic assumption is false. If it were true the world would be a much different place. Skyscrapers, hydro-electric dams, canals, space travel, bridges, etc. all rely on the premise that you can plan for what you can't see. This is especially true when we talk about investment in such ventures.
The fact that Agile proponents have latched on to the idea of the "roadmap" supports the need for Agile to expand its thinking. But since the short-term view and iteration model are necessary to achieve what Agile promises, it seems unlikely that expansion would happen in the first place. Which is why Agile will remain a powerful methodology, but not the only tool in the shed.
Cris Casey
casey@christophercasey.com
Rick, I enjoyed your article very much and have discussed how some of what you say here is relevant to all types of project management, not just Agile: http://www.ddmcd.com/culture.html
Dennis McDonald
Alexandria, Virginia
http://www.ddmcd.com
Dennis McDonald
Alexandria, Virginia
http://www.ddmcd.com
Many Techno-Babblers are unaware that the phenomenon of "Agile Software Development" was a paradigm began as "Chief Programmer Teams" in the 1960's and was a complete methodology by the late 1970's.
Harlan D. Mills, was the author of "Chief programmer teams, principles, and procedures", IBM Federal Systems Division Report FSC71-5108 (Gaithersburg, Md.) which I believe was published around 1971. As an IBM research fellow, Professor Mills adapted existing ideas from engineering and computer science to software development. These included the structured programming theory of Edsger Dijkstra and Robert W. Floyd (both awarded the Turing Award), as well as others. His Cleanroom software development process emphasized top-down design and formal specification.
Frederick Phillips Brooks, Jr. was a software engineer and computer scientist, best known for managing the development of IBM's System/360 family of computers and the OS/360 software support package, then later writing candidly about the process in his landmark book "The Mythical Man-Month". He wrote the paper "No Silver Bullet: Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering" in 1987. F.P. Brooks has received many awards, including the National Medal of Technology in 1985 and the Turing Award in 1999.
Larry LeRoy Constantine, spent several years studying the works of IBM Fellow Harlan Mills: Edsger Dijkstra; and Robert W (Bob) Floyd. Professor Constantine and began publishing many noteworthy papers gaining him an appointment as an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University by the time he was 27. He became a full professor at Stanford University six years later. He obtained this position without a Ph.D.
L. Constantine joined IBM's System Research Institute (SRI) in 1968. During those years Larry Constantine conducted a study of the most prolific software engineers and their methodologies for engineering software. He left SRI in 1972 having began development of a manuscript for "Fundamentals of Program Design: A Structured Approach". In 1974, after he resumed work on his manuscript, American Edward Nash Yourdon, (a software engineer computer consultant, author and lecturer; and pioneer in software engineering methodology), reviewed Constantine's manuscript; urging him to complete it. With the combined effort of Larry Constantine and Edward Yourdon, work on the manuscript continued.
As part of structured design, Larry Constantine developed the concepts of cohesion (the degree to which the internal contents of a module are related) and coupling (the degree to which a module depends upon other modules). These two concepts have been influential in the development of software engineering, and stand alone from "Structured-Modular Design" as significant contributions in their own right. They have proved foundational in areas ranging from software design to software metrics, and have become a part of the vernacular of the discipline.
After Constantine received the Turing Award in 1978, "for having a clear influence on methodologies for the creation of efficient and reliable software, the definitive work "Structured Design: Fundamentals of a Discipline of Computer Program and Systems Design" by Edward Yourdon/Larry L. Constantine, copyright 1979, was published by Prentice-Hall, Yourdon Press.
Harlan D. Mills, was the author of "Chief programmer teams, principles, and procedures", IBM Federal Systems Division Report FSC71-5108 (Gaithersburg, Md.) which I believe was published around 1971. As an IBM research fellow, Professor Mills adapted existing ideas from engineering and computer science to software development. These included the structured programming theory of Edsger Dijkstra and Robert W. Floyd (both awarded the Turing Award), as well as others. His Cleanroom software development process emphasized top-down design and formal specification.
Frederick Phillips Brooks, Jr. was a software engineer and computer scientist, best known for managing the development of IBM's System/360 family of computers and the OS/360 software support package, then later writing candidly about the process in his landmark book "The Mythical Man-Month". He wrote the paper "No Silver Bullet: Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering" in 1987. F.P. Brooks has received many awards, including the National Medal of Technology in 1985 and the Turing Award in 1999.
Larry LeRoy Constantine, spent several years studying the works of IBM Fellow Harlan Mills: Edsger Dijkstra; and Robert W (Bob) Floyd. Professor Constantine and began publishing many noteworthy papers gaining him an appointment as an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University by the time he was 27. He became a full professor at Stanford University six years later. He obtained this position without a Ph.D.
L. Constantine joined IBM's System Research Institute (SRI) in 1968. During those years Larry Constantine conducted a study of the most prolific software engineers and their methodologies for engineering software. He left SRI in 1972 having began development of a manuscript for "Fundamentals of Program Design: A Structured Approach". In 1974, after he resumed work on his manuscript, American Edward Nash Yourdon, (a software engineer computer consultant, author and lecturer; and pioneer in software engineering methodology), reviewed Constantine's manuscript; urging him to complete it. With the combined effort of Larry Constantine and Edward Yourdon, work on the manuscript continued.
As part of structured design, Larry Constantine developed the concepts of cohesion (the degree to which the internal contents of a module are related) and coupling (the degree to which a module depends upon other modules). These two concepts have been influential in the development of software engineering, and stand alone from "Structured-Modular Design" as significant contributions in their own right. They have proved foundational in areas ranging from software design to software metrics, and have become a part of the vernacular of the discipline.
After Constantine received the Turing Award in 1978, "for having a clear influence on methodologies for the creation of efficient and reliable software, the definitive work "Structured Design: Fundamentals of a Discipline of Computer Program and Systems Design" by Edward Yourdon/Larry L. Constantine, copyright 1979, was published by Prentice-Hall, Yourdon Press.
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