Buzzing Software Development Methodologies and Our Fascination

Businesses have narrowed down to have agility in order to become successful and sustainable. Businesses are learning and evolving as humans have done since the inception of life on this planet.

As in other industries, in software industry also few good men got together time and time again to reduce chaos observed over the period and came up with certain processes, models and frameworks. These became new buzz words and companies started to look out for experts and incorporated these. Only to notice that these are not static and what was understood as a good model earlier is a waste producing factory now. In my view one size doesn’t fit for all. There are so many variables and to generalize and adapt to one of such models is both foolish and destructive. Some of these buzz words are:

Waterfall, Iterative, V model, Scrum, LeSS, SAFE, Kanban, Feature driven, Incident driven……

Don’t get me wrong, I am all for it. Infect I am pro methods and frameworks (I am a professional Scrum Master after all, I literally am one!) simply because it brings certain rules, discipline and structure without which it is very hard to manage a project. What confuses me is the fascination to stick with one of the above even before analysing your need and the type of business.

For example, milk is considered a nutritious drink but a nightmare for lactose intolerant. Some have allergies of certain food which otherwise considered heavy in nutrition value. Similarly, what has done wonders for others doesn’t guaranty to work for you.

What has worked for us?

I work with team which is thriving in scrum framework still we aren’t shy of bending few rules here and there. We try new experiments and continue or discard on what we experience.

Extreme programming techniques along with best development practices complement Scrum. Without which Scrum would be smaller waterfall (mostly).Still, core Scrum framework remains the glue which has bonded us all.

Recommendations:

Start with what you wish for. You are here to develop a software product and not process. You may want process to become a guiding star or enabler with some sort of discipline and structure. You do not want process to come in your way or slow you down.

Chose your method wisely. Firstly, understand these defined methods, experiment, be open for new ideas. Take that experience and draw your rules, who knows you may invent the One for you !!!