Adhoc or Agile

I wanted to hot link to an old post by Simon Brown, but I believe he's dropped his old blog and transformed into a more consultant type blog. I'm copy pasting the old post here, with link to the original post.

In the vast majority of cases where these phrases are used, agile has mistakenly been used to mean that the development process in use is ad hoc or even non-existent. It's not hard to get to the bottom of what people mean by agile, particularly in interviews, with a few simple questions. Usually, the flow of conversation goes something like this.

• Me : So you're using agile ... how are you finding it?
• Them : Good thanks, we've been doing XP for a while now.
• Me : Oh right, which practices of XP are you following?
• Them : We've got the users sitting near us and we're doing test-driven development. We don't do pair programming.
• Me : How are you managing your iterations/time boxes?
• Them : We do a release whenever a new feature is ready. The users test it and then tell us how they'd like it changed. Agile is really good for capturing this early feedback. We just respond to whatever the users want and they love it!
• Me : So how long are your iterations?
• Them : Oh, that depends on .....
• Me : So then, how are you finding test-driven development?
• Them : We're really liking that. It's such a great technique for understanding exactly what an API should do before you code it.
• Me : Excellent. What sort of unit test coverage do you have?
• Them : Oh, I don't know, but it's probably over 50%.
• Me : 50%? Do you use a code coverage tool? Do you write unit tests before writing all of your code?
• Them : No, we've not got around to using a coverage tool yet. We sometimes right tests before the code, but we usually don't have the time to do that so we do it afterwards.
• Me : How do you ensure quality?
• Them : We're supposed to do code reviews, but we don't usually have time.
• Me : So then, how do you feel agile methods differ from others, such as ...?

For me, agile is about reducing the ceremony associated with software development while maintaining very tight control over the structure of the process and quality of the deliverables. Unfortunately, many people are now using "agile" as a buzzword to describe their projects, although in reality these projects are low in ceremony, structure and quality.

Hmmm ... are you really agile or just ad hoc?

Original Link: http://www.simongbrown.com/blog/2006/11/21/agile_or_ad_hoc.html