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.
It may not be scope creep that is troubling your project, but scope seep. And it may be self-inflicted. “Scope Seep” is what happens when the project team introduces additional scope of work not requested by the customer. Have a look at “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie”. It is not for children only. Quite the contrary.
“If You Give a Mouse a Cookie (If You Give…)”, by Laura Joffe Numeroff (Author) and Felicia Bond (Illustrator) ISBN-13: 978-0060245863.
Your project does not work and you cannot figure out why. Is it possible that your team and you are victim to the Cargo Cult science? … They’re doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn’t work… Reading Richard Feynman’s commencement address given at Caltech in 1974 may give you some clues and inspiration.
The Economist looks at the four giants dominating the consumer internet: Google, Apple, Facebook being at each other’s throats. There is a nice map of the internet ‘Middle Earth’, take a look and have a laugh.