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by Chris Rimmer.
Original Post: Software Development and Game Theory
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I've started reading "Agile Software Development" by Alistair Cockburn. I haven't had the time to get very far as yet, but I do like the way he analyzes software development as a game (that's game as in Game Theory). He characterizes it as a co-operative game of invention and communication. He also talks about how each project is a game, but that this fits into a larger game of corporate strategy. Looking at it this way helps us to understand that decisions that make no sense at the micro (project) level can make sense at the macro (corporate) level. So this post by Laurent Bossavit fitted nicely into topics I was thinking about. He is talking about the corporate level and why organisations sometimes don't do things the best way (e.g. Agile development), using the Prisoner's Dilemma to explain it.