Ken,
Although I agree that Winston
Royce’s paper doesn’t describe an Agile process of today, I think it is not
such a bad paper if you take into consideration the
following:
1.
In figure 7, Royce proposes an early ‘simulation’
done by a small skilled team, to prove the concept. Thus he says that a
complete iteration through, testing and usage, is the most appropriate form of
feedback. He notes that going only one level up is not
adequate.
2.
I certainly disagree with Royce on the usefulness
of the extensive documentation he recommends. But note – you can
substitute tests for most of Royce’s documentation, and if you do this, the
paper is not so bad. Royce didn’t have access to the testing capability
we do today, but if he did, I’ll bet most of his documentation would be
changed tests in a 2003 paper.
3.
At least Royce admits that everything besides
analysis and coding is waste. How many people have been insulted when I called
all that other stuff waste! Now I can quote Royce at them and have
someone with real credibility back me up.
I have a suggestion that comes
from product development. In the 1980’s, product development in the
US was decidedly sequential. Nobody had a clue
how to do it any other way. You’ve got to excuse the software
development writers of the time for their sequential bias – it was everywhere
(in this country anyway).
In the late 1980’s, Kim Clark
studied the product development practices of automakers world-wide. The
results are in his book “Product Development Performance” (1991) and Womack’s
book “The Machine that Changed the World,” (1990). They noted that Japanese
product development practices saved 1/3 in development time and 1/2 the
development effort, and resulted in better products – consistently, across the
industry. They called Japanese practices concurrent development.
Most US automobile companies have moved from sequential to
concurrent product development, as have many other
companies.
Clark points out that the fundamental
difference between sequential and concurrent development is the information
flow between people. It is high bandwidth, bi-directional, and
concurrent (ie, information gets transferred as soon as design starts, not
when its done). The feedback provided by this approach is enormous, and
accounts for the large, consistent improvement in
performance.
I vote for a redefinition of
terms: Waterfall becomes sequential. Agile becomes
concurrent.
Sequential is a true description
of what is considered traditional software development, and is not a
pejorative. Concurrent captures the essential difference of
Agile, especially since it requires broad communication and feedback. (I
know you said the heart of agile is creativity, but who’s to say that a
sequential process has no creativity?)
Mary Poppendieck
www.poppendieck.com
952-934-7998
