A harsh perspective on agile software development, shared by Slashdot reader itwbennett: Politicians would be utter failures as agile project managers, writes David Taber, and for all the reasons you might imagine, but mainly because they wantonly make promises they have no hope or thought of keeping. But then he gets into the political attributes successful project managers need. And that’s where things get interesting because, while he points out that agile was ‘conceived of as a way of bypassing bureaucracy and internal politics,’ the attributes he says are required for success are pretty much the worst of the political behavior we’ve all witnessed in our organizations. For example, “A key success factor for agile projects is the ability for every team member to talk expectations down at every possible juncture. Agile should inherently involve frequent 1:1 contact with users: use that time to lower expectations! Without this habit, the inevitable scope creep and the impulse to believe “of course the system will do X for me” will get you.”

His submission ends with this question. “Is it any wonder why users hate agile?”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Playing Politics With Agile Projects