Episode 401: Jeremy Miller on Waterfall Versus Agile
Jeremy Miller, Senior Software Architect at Calavista Software, compares and contrasts his experiences with waterfall and agile methodologies. Host Jeff Doolittle spoke with Miller about the history of these methodologies and which elements of them Miller has experienced as either detrimental or useful. Variations on Agile methodologies were also discussed, along with what practices can best be leveraged to help a team experience true agility.
Related links
- SE-Radio Episode 188: Requirements in Agile Projects
- SE-Radio Episode 186: Martin Fowler and Pramod Sadalage on Agile Database Development
- SE-Radio Episode 180: Leading Agile Developers with Jurgen Appelo
- SE-Radio Episode 170: Large Agile Software Development with Bas Vodde
- SE-Radio Episode 103: 10 Years of Agile Experiences
- Guest’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jeremydmiller
SE Radio theme: “Broken Reality” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com — Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0)
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Tags: agile, agility, ComputerSociety, ieeecs, podcast, scrum, seradio, waterfall, xp
Loved the scrum in the “Scrappy-Do” of agile methodologies. Over the last 10 years scrum has metastasized and become synonymous with agile. Every yahoo business/management type knows all about it and thinks you should be using it.
The whole waterfall vs agile thing was kind of tiresome. A Betrand Meyer discusses this in his book “Agile”. Pure waterfall is a kind of strawman that never existed in its pure form. Agile authors books and authors find it useful to pullout this strawman and kick around a bit to get their audience interested.
Some of the content mentioned in this podcast illustrates the misunderstanding within the community. SCRUM first and foremost is a framework, not a fully baked solution, for Agile Change Management. It has nothing to do with engineering practices so criticizing it for not having engineering is like criticizing a fish because it can’t fly. SCRUM must be tailored to the specific team environment and continuously improve. On the other side those who think SCRUM and Agile are the ultimate saviors of the software industry are guilty of practicing a metastasized religion. There needs to be balance in all things! Plan up front what should and must be planned, iterate, plan, repeat. See Juval Lowes Right Software book for a holistic approach.