Why is it that many development shops still do not practice agile? What makes adoption so slow even today after so many successful projects? There are countless evangelists out there preaching and demonstrating the practices yet it seems that the old ways of waterfall like development are anything but numbered. Even worse, there are plenty of shops out there that claim to practice agile, and ignore some of the most basic principles – first one that comes to mind is continuous improvement. Ever dodging that post mortem, perpetually avoiding those tough questions – are we delivering value to our customers? Is our software maintainable, flexible, can it respond to the clients rapidly changing needs, particularly in this difficult economic climate?
A small startup will wither and die if they’d be providing these subpar services to their customers. Some large corporations, unfortunately, seem to benefit from inertia and continue to do business as usual. Are their customers not demanding enough? Do they continue supporting them in hope that one day they will get what they pay for? It can’t be the customers, after all our services haven’t been an astounding commercial success.
I’m not even sure where this was going. Suffice to say I’m a string believer in sustainable development.