A neat session this morning on Agile Development. While not pushing the “Microsoft Way” of doing Agile Development it was a thought-provoking session talking about the need to focus on the “ingredients” that make the Agile “recipe” work. Not terribly new or innovative (this stuff has been around for a while and I’ve had some exposure to it through Extreme Programming) but it really made me wish that we implemented it in some form. In the project that I’m working on right now, it’s a difficult environment since we’re spread out geographically and much of the development effort is performed in different places, in different time zones, by just a few developers. However, I do feel that it would be well worth it to pursue this (and actually implement this for the next phase of our project).
Some of the key “ingredients” include a heavy focus on communication within the group, a willingness to change as your environment changes, a focus on strict but simple rules and procedures for the software development lifecycle, and a focus on the customer. Like I said, it’s not new, but it really does challenge the traditional software development process.
More session summaries as I have time,
