Monday, June 12, 2006

Interesting Counterpoint to Benefits of Agile Development

Via Ron Jeffries's blog, a ten-point critique of evidenciary claims made in Craig Larman's Agile and Iterative Development: A Manager's Guide": Misstating the Evidence for Agile and Iterative Development, Chapter 6, Evidence.

I haven't read Larman’s book, but the article’s author, Isaac Gouy, gives specific quotes out of Larman’s work, then does a handy job refuting those points based on evidence Larman himself cites.

It should be noted I am not jumping in on Gouy’s side.  I’ve a huge distrust of short snippets of quotes taken from larger works.  We see our lousy media doing a great job of handily, purposely distorting the gist of an argument via Dowdification.  (Note that’s done on either side, not just via MoDo.)

Regardless of the Dowdification factor, Gouy’s article makes for interesting reading.  Do be sure to read Jeffries’s commentary on Gouy’s background on comp.software.extreme-programming.  Jeffries emphatic non-committal says something on its own.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The arguments against the evidence in the book are very interesting. I've quoted a handful of those statements from the book before and it's a nice reminder that anything that is handed off as "evidence" should be reviewed and understood (in the original context) before it is passed along as fact.

Isaac Gouy said...

Do be sure to read Jeffries’s commentary on Gouy’s background on comp.software.extreme-programming.

Or better yet actually look at comp.software.extreme-programming ;-)

Is 'where his primary focus has been to "debunk" Craig Larman's book' character assassination or simply shooting the messenger?

Jim Holmes said...

>> Or better yet actually look at comp.software.extreme-programming ;-) <<

What, actually DO research on the facts? I'm shocked!

>> Is 'where his primary focus has been to "debunk" Craig Larman's book' character assassination or simply shooting the messenger? <<

Neither, I'd say. How about one man's opinion based on what he sees as your past behavior?

Isaac Gouy said...

It's true that over a year ago I posted a series of examples where afaict there was a mismatch between the source material and Chapter 6 of the book.

It would be ordinary to look at the source material and the book, and say Isaac Gouy has got it wrong. That hasn't happened.

It's true that I'd like to see the misstatements in Chapter 6 corrected. Find bugs, fix bugs. Is that a focus on "debunking" Craig Larman's book?

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