Kevin's Weblog

Martin Fowler recently asked IsAgileForAll. He asserted that:

When a new technique or tool appears, it's usually tried out first by higher ability developers. This is quite a natural response. Early adopters have to be those who are more thoughtful and caring about their profession.

Now, this may be true that there are thoughtful and skilled people who care deeply about the software development profession among those who have adopted XP and other agile methodologies, but it also seems to me that there are a number of people who have jumped on the XP bandwagon because it is cool, fashionable, or because it seems easier and more fun than other methodologies. I don’t see any reason to think that these people should have much overlap with the set consisting of the best developers. (Nor, do I suspect that the outcomes of projects involving these two groups should be particularly similar.)

To be fair, this is sort of irrelevant to Folwer’s point, which is that it is hard to predict the success of a methodology in the general population based on the experiences of early adopters. Almost certainly there will be some bias in that sample population. However, I do think that Agile proponents may be misleading themselves about who they are appealing to. The real worry is that they may discount failure stories with excuses like “They didn’t do it right”, or “Their developers were too junior”.