Re: Call for participation: What types of organisations adopt agile methods?

Tom Anderson wrote:
I certainly agree with that - if you're implementing stuff the client hasn't asked for, you're doing it wrong.

While generally I endorse Tom's reasoning, I have to disagree here. Most of the time one must implement things the client hasn't asked for, if one is to implement what the client wants. More than once I have been the hero for having heard what's wanted between the lines of what's requested.

The whole business about requirements gathering is human-to-human communication. To blithely assert that there's nothing wrong with the methodology, people just need to communicate better, is to be either disingenuous or naive. People do not communicate better. Methodologies that deal with the reality of that do better because they aren't Pollyanna-head-in-the-sand-communism-would-work-if-only-people-were-generous blind to the way things really are.

Also, clients change their mind, and you can be the victim of your own success. If you do give them what they want, it triggers their imagination and they immediately want a whole bunch more.

Agile techniques, buzzwordiness aside, deal with the reality that times, ideas, opinions, knowledge and desire change over time, and that communication is imperfect. Rather than pouting that people should be better at requirements gathering up front, the agile outlook acknowledges that we aren't, by dint of which it reduces the cost of imperfect communication, formalizes the adaptation to new knowledge and provides rapid feedback as to whether a project actually is doing what's wanted, instead of waiting until millions have been spent to discover the problem.

If you think up-front requirements are so easy, try this next time you buy a car. Before you go to the dealer, without googling for car specs or looking at any pictures of cars, completely specify your car.

Don't forget to describe the diameter of the steering wheel, how much foot pressure you need on the brake pedal to stop within 120 feet from a 60 mph start, the precise layout of tachometer, speedometer, and other dashboard controls, the size of the rear-view mirror, the wheelbase, the amount of road vibration detectable from the interior (and what the metric for that is), the placement of the audio speakers, the length of time the seat-belt warning bell rings, ...

Or you could take a test drive and just comment on the few things in the prototype vehicle that differ from what you want.

--
Lew
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