Myths about Agile

From my interactions with colleagues and from what I read on some places on the Net, I've come up with a short list of myths associated with Agile:

1. No processes
2. No documentation
3. No discipline
4. Bad design (mostly hacks)

Most of the above stem from incomplete (if any!) understanding of Agile. It spreads from word of mouth and is usually without basis.

I'll try to clear away these myths here...

Before that, let me speak of another very interesting take on Agile that I heard when I met a prospective client for my company. The client thought that Agile could tackle only procedural languages, and that it wasn't geared for OO languages!! I have no idea how he came about to believe that! Agile hardly has anything to do with how coding is done; it is a mindset that can be applied to almost any software development.

Also, his view of a product was that it could have iterations no shorter than a month; this is not true at all -- it is not necessary to have a minimum of one month for an iteration; in extreme cases, I wouldn't mind iterations of one day! One-week iterations are not uncommon and actually encouraged if allowed by circumstances.

I'm not making fun of a respectable client but trying to uncover the kind of myths circulating out there due to lack of proper understanding. This is exactly the semantic diffusion Martin Fowler talks about.

Tags: technology:agile Last modified 01:50 Wed, 3 Jan 2007 by AmanKing. Accessed 256 times Children What Links Here Share Except where expressly noted, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.