Back in early April, I wrote about Nic Ferrier’s take on agile. Ferrier understands it as a way of increasing communication in development teams. He makes a good case that agile is at worst benign and that in most cases it has a lot to offer.
Here’s the other side of the story. Ralf over at agileoverflow presents the above post from Michael O. Church arguing that agile is nonsense and giving a long and detailed account of its shortcomings. It’s very interesting and you should definitely read it.
As I said in my original post on Ferrier’s interview, I’ve never used agile and am completely ignorant about its benefits and shortcomings. The two posts give opposing view points and help, at least, identify some of the main issues. I still don’t know if agile is something we should embrace or not but I’d be happy to hear from readers on either side who have some wisdom on the matter.