Simon Thorneycroft and Jonathan Hodgson

Objections to Agile Development from Senior Executives

I enjoyed reading this article an Objections to Agile Development (via Darrell Norton).

"In big companies, it's often more acceptable to be wrong than it is to be uncertain."

One of the reasons software development has had such a checkered past in many IT organizations has been the lack of a business-IT partnership — a lack of defining roles and responsibilities. Since IT staff have had good analytical skills, they have often been used as “analysts” for the business, helping business departments improve their processes, for example. Then, the business department staff turns around and blames IT for the result — “See what they did to us.” If IT doesn’t help the business redesign processes prior to automation, the comments are “See, you just automated the old stuff,” and when they do help with redesign, IT gets blamed for all the changes, staff reductions, job changes, and so on. It’s a no-win situation because there’s little acceptance of responsibility on the client side for the results of the automation effort.

... Agile developers are saying, "Enough. If the development staff can't deliver acceptable working software on a regular, short-iteration basis, the customers ought to fire us and get someone who can." Conversely, if the customers can't identify features, prioritize them, and interact with the development team to flush out requirements, then the development team should retire from the project.