My small contribution to propagating Agile (and how it did not go so well)

Some time ago, I was involved (along with much more respected people) in a thread on the XP mailing list where an editor for CIO.com asked about communication tools in the context of an Agile project. I thought my answer was quite balanced, arguing that it was not as good as face-to-face conversation, but still could be useful.

When the article was released, I was rather self-satisfied to see one of my sentences (Distributed teams will have difficulties getting all the benefits of Agile methods, though such tools as IM might help compensate, up to a point) reused almost verbatim (Distributed teams have difficulty getting all of the benefits of Agile methods, even though tools such as instant messaging or IRC may compensate somewhat).

Unfortunately, this was in a section that lists reasons for which one might not go Agile. I strongly disagree with almost all the reasons mentioned (more than 20 developers, distributed environments, mission-critical applications).

Sadly, the poor editor happily reported the issuing of the article on the XP mailing list, only to have everyone expressing their disappointment. She counter-argued that it only reflected the opinions she gathered on the mailing list.

Clearly, something is not being communicated well!