Content area
Full Text
Industry Watch
I've seen a whole lot of ideas floated out into our space over the past five years. Some seemed reasonable, while others caused me to arch a dubious brow.
One concept, though, has resonated with me from the moment I heard about it. Perhaps it's due to my background as a newspaperman, used to facing daily deadlines to produce a newspaper with little margin for error. Used to being held accountable for my work on a daily basis. Used to sitting in on public sessions with the newspaper ombudsman to ensure the paper we published was what the readers wanted.
The idea I'm speaking about is iterative development, aka agile development. I first heard Martin Fowler talk about light-weight development approaches and Extreme Programming five years ago at UMLWorld 2000 in New York City. I understood right away, and left wondering why this isn't the norm for software development-using pairs of developers to help advance a project (under the Extreme Programming methodology), creating and doing tests even as code is being written, and engaging the customer or end user in ongoing discussions to ensure the project is meeting requirements.
The original creators of the "Agile Manifesto" back in 2001 were talking squarely to developers and their...