Back in September 2014, Erik Meijer, a Dutch computer scientist, gave a remarkable keynote speech at Reaktor Dev Day in Helsinki, Finland. It began with a claim that “Agile is a cancer that we have to eliminate from the industry”. You can follow the full video at Vimeo . This speech incited a large number of web discussions about who is right and who is not, who does and who does not understand Agile, but the most of those discussions missed the main point. The challenging opening was an overture to the main idea, and that is ‘One Hacker Way’. It contains – as may well be expected from a keynote speech – provoking, disputable and controversial statements, but also some very intriguing stuff. I would say: listen to the message, try to understand it and do not judge from a holy Agile corner.
Not only cars, also projects can be hybrid. An upcoming theme in the last couple of years are waterfall-planned and agile-driven projects, or hybrid, if you like. A rule of the thumb seems to be that going hybrid makes sense when software development and infrastructure deployment are equally represented. A number of interesting blogs, articles, presentations and books are available, but preciously little can be found on show cases, experiences and lessons learned. Do you know of any more?
Will ISO 21500 help? Well, you tell me. ISO is telling us the background and offers to purchase the document. A pocket guide can be pre-ordered at Amazon. You should go for that one; I had it in my hand. But beware of other initiatives. Some have already offered pricey courses for a kind-of-certification for certificate-hungry organisations and people. You cannot get a certification for ISO 21500. You will be much better off by spending money on downloading from ISO and hearing it from the horse’s mouth. There are also useful comparisons with PMBOK® Guide. Will ISO 21500 help? Pat Weaver’s blog tells a longer and interesting story about this. It would help me and my fellows though, if ISO 21500 were accessible for a reduced price through our associations, like PMI and IPMA.