Agile Development in the Real World

Abstract

Software development has undergone a sea change in the last 15 years, as the industry evolved from the traditional “heavy-weight” project processes to the “lighter” development processes. The development pendulum has swung from formal practices to extremely informal practices, from Big Up-Front Design (BUFD) to the No-Up-Front-Anything of emergent design. The agilists’ argument was that because the product cannot be fully known until the project was completed, don’t waste time on discovery and documenting: learn as you go, learn from conversations as you write code, and don’t waste time learning up front.