In the book Good to great Jim Collins talks about a Stockdale paradox. Many organizations are busy today trying to implement a myriad of new processes and metodologies. But are they really aware of thier actions.
At the end of the day every business software project or product has a certain life span. Most of the software we write today has a life span of 5-7 years.
How many applications are there today on the internet that existed five years ago.?
Think of what you did five years ago.The internet was quite new, google was absent, so was You tube , Skype and ITunes. IPod was not such a hot commodity a s it is now. Today IPOD has become synonymous to Mp3 players.
These are some software products that in my made have made a huge difference in how we percieve and use techy stuff ( from a common mans perspective )
1) Google Search
2) Hotmail / Yahoo mail
3) Apache server
4) Yahoo finance
5) Microsoft word
6) Windows XP
7) Yahoo messenger
Mapquest
9) EBay/WIkipedia
10) Travelocity
There are thousands of other products that have made a huge impact but in my view the above 10 have made the maximum impact on what we do today
Do you think all the tools above followed XP, Scrum or similar methods, and Agile. Are all of these TDD driven, have acceptance tests and follow iterative development.
I am sure of almost seven in the list which certainly were in no way developed on any agile technique.
What drove them was the fire to innovate, the need to be different. There was a wide open need and a product was developed that met the need. IT need not have been the best. Case in point , many of us dont use Mapquest today but use the much fancier version google maps or other look alikes like Microsoft maps.
As software developers and product owners we should not again become slaves to processes. If we start talking too much about things that dont matter then we are not going to be succesful.
We dont write code in agile or XP. We write in Java, C and C# ( Oh and how can i miss out on the Ruby lovers ).
What if all of a sudden tomorrow, we forget about agile.XP and Scrum / Lean {CTRL ATL DEL), would we stop developing software and provide value to customers.
It is important to take a hard look at how we all develop software and think of this paradox
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The Agile Stockdale Paradox |
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Retain faith that Agile XP, Scrum will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties. |
AND at the same time |
Confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be. |
