Lately reading around the agile software development community, I feel that something is going wrong.
XP. SCRUM and all the other agile methodologies were borne with a single intention in mind ‘uncovering a better way of developing software‘.
That’s where I feel embarrassed: sometimes we forget that the goal of software development is to make the company make money. So a better way of developing software should help in making more money. This is what we should always take in mind!
And here is where the agile paradigms can help: there are different ways of developing software. Agile methodologies help in having a better result for the customer, for the dev team and for the company itself.
BUT the primary goal is to make your company more profitable: that’s what these methods are designed for. All your choices, in your path to agile, should be submitted to that goal: so release consistently, release value for the customer, respect schedule, release quality. Help your customers to win in their business.
PierG
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December 28, 2007 at 4:20 pm
Cost Based vs. Value Based Development « My mind wanders…
[...] of our own company and therefore ultimately this affects profit margins, a point well made by this blog post.) by not pushing back. If you look at principles like YAGNI used by developers, perhaps [...]
January 3, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Ananth Krishnan
Could not agree with you more!
January 4, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Massimo
Exactly as the goal of quality management is to make the company make more money!
Unfortunately most of people (even the ones directly involved in QMS) are not “so smart” to really act to achieve such goal or are not “so smart” to understand that an enlightened quality management is money, not hot air.
The critical point is how to focus and convince such people…
Ciao;
Massimo.
February 19, 2008 at 6:47 pm
Alberto Brandolini
There’s been some mismatch between developers’ goals and company goals. Often developers are not rewarded proportionally to their software’s success. So profit is not a measurable feedback. Customer satisfaction is a lot more measurable for a developer because can make you proud of your job, or turn your life into a bug-fix hell. But a developer can easily try to produce the perfect software where good-enough could me the most profitable option.
I’ve seen a couple of places where quality was simply not an issue. The customer was “forced” to buy also support after delivery. So producing the perfect code was a way to earn less… I still consider this an exception, but I’ve seen it happening.
But making more money is a side effect, like it is picking up girls for a Rock’n'Roll star: maybe it was the original goal, but you’ve gotta to be good in something else to achieve it!
Alberto