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by Daniel Berger.
Original Post: Agile Al
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I see Al-Noor Ramji has made the news over on computerworld.com. There's two sides to every story, so let me give you low down on what you aren't hearing about good ol' Al-Noor.
First, his agile development approach tosses documentation and refactoring out the window. The upshot is that you end up with prototypes in production in order to meet his insane deadlines. This includes both code and database design. The upshot is that not only do you end up with a system that probably going to be very brittle, you'll also have a system no one longer truly understands in about 3-5 years because of the usual employee turnover.
Second, in order to meet his deadline for major products he has the developers working 12+ hours a day, plus weekends, for many weeks. It's a good way to burn out your developers. Single guys in their 20's will put up with that bullshit for a long while. Your experienced 30+ year olds with families will start hitting the job boards real quick, however.
However, he does get two things right. First, he ditched Waterfall. Smart. Second, it looks like he cracked down on the business tossing in new requirements in the middle of a development cycle, which is something that killed us at times.
That being said, you can't just ditch documentation and refactoring. I know it doesn't show up on ye olde spreadsheet as providing $$$, but trust me, you'll be glad you did in the long run, and it will almost certainly reduce problems down the road.
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