Agile methodologies are being bantered around again and are quite often discussed as if for the first time, with an energy that is exciting, but at times with a level of certainty and yet incompleteness in some people that just doesn’t seem to fit – I’ve recently sat through presentations and had discussions where people seem to be looking for some kind of fame or self-certified expert opinion without getting to the roots of this clearly historically evolved perspective – They are grasping at small aspects of what appears to be a much broader subject that requires careful review. Don’t get me wrong, i love the banter, but either i am just well far behind everyone else on this subject (which is most likely true), or they are just blagging.

So, my mission is to uproot the agile working methodology and get an understanding of:

• What are its parts?
• What are its predecessors and its history?
• What is its scope and who does it impact (it’s clearly a lot more than TDD, although some people don’t seem to think so)?
• Is it actually possible to “do” or “not do” agile, or is it valid to adopt only some of it’s parts (This sounds like an obvious one, but i’m fed up with hearing “we do agile” and “we don’t”!)
• How can we benefit from its many parts?

I’ll be posting more as I progress my uprooting.