This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Ruby Buzz by Obie Fernandez. Original Post: 3 Reasons Why I'm not Post-Agile, Yet Feed Title: Obie On Rails (Has It Been 9 Years Already?) Feed URL: http://jroller.com/obie/feed/entries/rss Feed Description: Obie Fernandez talks about life as a technologist, mostly as ramblings about software development and consulting. Nowadays it's pretty much all about Ruby and Ruby on Rails. Latest Ruby Buzz Posts Latest Ruby Buzz Posts by Obie Fernandez Latest Posts From Obie On Rails (Has It Been 9 Years Already?)

1) Ruby (on Rails) breathes new life into eXtreme Programming. It's back to the future time: XP was conceived with Smalltalk and Ruby is "the next Smalltalk". I wonder why Kent isn't talking more about that! Perhaps nobody has told him about it yet? Regardless, my teams at ThoughtWorks have been kicking ass doing XP on Rails, and trust me there's plenty more to analyze and talk about that subject! You see, less time dealt with XML situps, infrastructure and integration of disparate libraries means more face-to-face time with our customers and faster feedback cycles. Martin's keynote was all about Ruby's power to enable XP.

2) Over the last few years I've read plenty of commentary in the blogsphere about the word "Agile" being hijacked by non-agile people, with some saying that "Agile" has been muddied to the point of just meaning "good" (see Robert C. Martin's comments in 2003 about that). Lately I've been participating more and more in sales pursuits for ThoughtWorks. Buyers do seem to understand that there's a distinction between our real (yes, I'm biased) versions of Agile and the clearly non-agile behavior they experience with other vendors or predominantly, from their own people.

3) I still feel the values of the Agile Alliance (Manifesto) are the most succinctly expressed principles proposed for achieving successful software projects. Those values speak to me, particularly the first one: "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools".

Curious about post-agility? Try Pliant Software Development, which like 37Signals' "Getting Real" is kind of a non-process process. FlexDev, is another.