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I still have to write my summary of Scott Ambler's talk at Devoxx yesterday on Agile Myth Busters, but I really wanted to have this picture of 1 slide already posted on my blog. This proves with numbers that agile software development really is better than traditional (waterfall) approach.

The picture is not entirely clear, since it is made with a (simple) mobile phone in a room with not very much light.

Look at the bar charts on the left: both iterative and agile projects are more successful (> 70%) than traditional projects (approx. 60%) and hacking.

The bar charts on the right make a distinction between quality, functionality, money and time.

• the green bar represents iterative projects
• the yellow is for agile projects
• the light blue bars are for traditional projects
• the pink/purple bar stand for hacking

Iterative and agile projects score much better on quality and functionality compared to traditional projects. Even hacking delivers more functionality than traditional projects. But the most remarkable is that traditional project score really bad on money and time.

The full summary will also talk about the fact that agile development is not only about small projects by co-located teams...

Thanks, Scott!

Ondertussen is het programma van Devoxx 2009 zo goed als finaal. De opening page van de Devoxx site (http://www.devoxx.com) toont ondertussen een overzicht van alle sprekers. Opvallende verschijning - voor mij - in dit lijstje is Scott Ambler. Voor mij is dit de 3de keer dat ik Scott Ambler op Devoxx zal zien. Hij geeft gewoonlijk presentaties in de sfeer van modeling en agile development. Hij heeft onder andere een book geschreven over agile modeling (echt een aanrader, durft bovendien open deuren in te trappen bij zgn. agile puristen - XP, Scrum, ...). Daarnaast heeft hij een agile versie van het Rational Unified Process (RUP) uitgewerkt: Agile unified Process (AUP). meer info hierover kan je vinden op http://www.ambysoft.com/unifiedprocess/agileUP.html.

Hij deinst er niet voor terug om straffe uitspraken te doen. En ook dit jaar zal zijn presentatie wellicht heel wat stof doen opwaaien: hij heeft het namelijk over Agily Mythbusters. Dit is de korte omschrijving van zijn presentatie:

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There are many myths regarding agile software development. Some of the myths are that agile has been adopted by the majority of development teams, that agile approaches are more effective than waterfall approaches, that agile is empirical, that agile teams don't do up front requirements or architecture, that agile teams produce less documentation, that it is common for agile teams to take a test-driven approach, and many more. Several of those myths are true, several false, and some we're not so sure about yet. This talk summarizes the results of 4 years of industry surveys concerning the adoption and effectiveness of agile techniques. Very often the reality is significantly different than the rhetoric presented in mailing lists, in articles, and even in books. It is time to cut through the dogma promoted by agile consultants and instead focus on what agile practitioners are actually doing on their projects.

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Voor mij zal het misschien niet allemaal nieuw zijn (hij zal wellicht een aantal dingen herhalen die hij vorige keren ook al heeft gesteld), maar het is altijd interessant om hem bezig te horen. Ik kijk er alleszins naar uit.