About
Clarety For Hire
Blog Categories
Most Commented
Blog Archives
Free Newsletter
Subscribe To This Feed
Search Blog
Sponsored Links
Recommended Books
Home / Blog / category / Methodology Agile
Posted by Kevin Brady on Thu 28th September 2006 at 04:13 AM, Filed in Methodology Agile, Programme Management, Project Management, Software Development
It is clear that over the past 50 years Deming’s ideas have become the dominant management doctrine among the western industrialised nations and have often been lauded for the transformation of Japanese car manufacturing in the 1970’s. Adoption of these ideas by Toyota and other Japanese car manufacturers generated such stunning productivity that it firmly entrenched these companies as the dominant players in the modern, global car manufacturing market.
Heart land of Deming & Taylor – The production line.
Despite this transformation in manufacturing, Deming’s doctrines have not had the same impact on the civil engineering, construction and to some extent the IT industries. The reason for this can be traced back to Deming & Taylor’s focus on improving production line efficiency. In contrast civil engineering and construction derive their revenue almost exclusively from the sale of unique project ventures which are rarely repeated. A key difference.
Del.icio.us •
Digg this •
Posted by Kevin Brady on Mon 25th September 2006 at 12:49 PM, Filed in Methodology Agile, Programme Management, Project Management, Software Development
I am sure many of my regular readers are aware of the huge number of comments and long running dialogue concerning my post Agile Fails to Get to Grips with Human Psychology.
Chaplin’s “Modern Times”
Recently one of my regular commenter’s decided to bring up an age old argument of Systems versus Individuals or better known as Taylor Vs Deming. I am conscious that a post working through my opinion on this age old argument is something more befitting a book rather than a short blog post, and as such I am in danger of over simplifying a very complex issue and it’s relevance to the software industry.
Posted by Kevin Brady on Thu 17th August 2006 at 03:10 PM, Filed in Key Articles, Methodology Agile, Software Development
I promise in the next few weeks to concentrate on other subjects other than AGILE and its deficiencies, but my readership statistics show that AGILE is a popular subject. I also feel I have to keep up with my protagonists comments, which are appearing not just on my blog but all over the net.
At the moment, the net is buzzing with AGILE evangelist websites and Blogs making statements like “the AGILE manifesto is the equivalent to Newton 4th Law of Motion”. When someone takes a fanatical belief in anything without proper empirical evidence you have got to start thinking!!. Please see my post Storm in a Tea Cup. I really think these evangelists do not expect us to engage our brains. They think if they keep repeating the common look-up list of humorous slogans about AGILE’s invincibility, we will all be conditioned into turning a blind eye to the detail and asking for verifiable and independent evidence concerning this approach’s claimed scalability and prowess over other methods /approaches. At the moment the whole IT methods industry from Waterfall to RUP to AGILE and SCRUM is in need of consolidation based on some sound independent research. As we speak, large corporations take huge “flip flop” financial gambles adopting this method over another, largely based on the word of lightweight fee-earning consultants.
Posted by Kevin Brady on Thu 27th July 2006 at 03:30 AM, Filed in Key Articles, Methodology Agile, Software Development
AGILE, as mentioned in previous articles “AGILE Enough is Enough", “AGILE Will Burn Your Arse", is pure “Farty Floops” (a phrase coined by a good friend of mine ) as a fit for purpose approach to delivering large scale IT projects /programmes of work.
In the beginning, the scalability of AGILE methods was even questioned by some of the AGILE founding fathers and leading authors in this field.
Then the fees gravy train came and changed everything!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The stratospheric popularity of the AGILE has kicked these concerns /potential weaknesses quietly under the carpet, where I fear they will stay until more money is lost on failed large scale IT projects /programmes of work.
Posted by Kevin Brady on Fri 30th June 2006 at 10:05 PM, Filed in Methodology Agile, Software Development
Just read the following article from an AGILE evangelist blogg – Managing “Leaderful” Groups
This article made me really angry. It makes AGILE look like the Hippy Commune method for software development. “We can all be leaders, we are leaders we all work together for the common good etc etc” (sounds like new labour 
) and “Evil Managers as was rudely stated” have to be re-educated. Sounds like Pol Pot’s year zero. I KID YOU NOT there are Project Management training sites offering AGILE training entitled “how to project manage AGILE projects where you don’t have much to do.” CRAZIEST thing I have ever heard.
Posted by Kevin Brady on Mon 26th June 2006 at 12:00 AM, Filed in Key Articles, Methodology Agile
During the week Computing Magazine, one of the best freebee computer magazines I know, dropped through the front door. All was going well until I reached the analysis section and Fig 1 :-
Fig 1 Government versus non-government adoption of AGILE
It states that AGILE another “No Pain High Gain” methodology is on the ascendance, and appears to be taking the intellectual high ground.
However, it looks to me like a suffocating fish trying to trash about in a useless attempt to find the next potential life saver. This trendily named method is nothing new, as I have come across it at various points throughout my IT career. However, in those days it was referred to as the SOP (Seat of the Pants) or JFDI (Just F***King Do It) development method. These names don’t sound so good do they? Such approaches to system development only work in a limited range of circumstance for systems of a particular type /level of complexity. In my view AGILE is nothing more than a posh word for hacking together software.
