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NOTES

¹When I started writing this introduction, I was quite proud of my analogy of Luther's 95 Theses and the Agile Manifesto. Unbeknownst to me, Cutter Consortium Fellow Robert Charette had not only picked up on the same analogy, but he had done one better by dressing up like Luther at a software conference and tacking a copy of the Agile Manifesto to a fake cathedral door!

²Most students of technology recognize the importance that the DOD Advanced Research Project Agency played in the development of high technology. This organization gave early support of research into computers, software, databases, and, of course, the Internet. Other major technology research funding came from various military and intelligence services.

³To be honest, DOD has never been as successful in its software management activities as it has with its hardware, but, then again, no other organization has been uniformly successful when it comes to developing really large, state-of-the-art software systems.

⁴DOD has reinforced this by making systems development and systems management methods part of the standards that vendors must comply with to get DOD projects.

⁵According to the SEI, roughly 40% of all CMM Level 4 and Level 5 certifications are for Indian firms.

⁶It is important to note that CMM means mostly software management processes such as estimating, scheduling, quality control. The CMM has historically been faulted for its lack of interest in product development process, which we will see is where agile development excels.

⁷One of the most controversial ideas behind CMM is whether the software development process can be managed as closely as a manufacturing one. Indeed, there are a number of major thinkers that consider the idea of quality CMMs as fundamentally flawed.

⁸Council Fellow Ed Yourdon remarked that there was less cultural resistance to the kind of structure imposed by CMM in India than in the US. How much of a role cultural differences play in implementing rigorous software processes is still an open question.

⁹In response to the criticism about CMM's lack of objectivity, the SEI has created a measurement program to support CMM certification; this program is called the Software Engineering Measurement and Analysis Initiative.

¹⁰There are some notable exceptions, of course. Council Fellow Jim Highsmith, author of two influential books on agile development [2, 3] is a pioneer in systems methodologies going back to the 1970s. Cutter Consortium Fellow Robert Charette, Steve Mellor, and Ken Schwaber are other greybeards that have joined forces with the agile camp.

¹¹There are a number of other agile methodologies that have signed on to the Agile Manifesto. Some of the better known are Scrum, Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM), Feature Driven Development (FDD), and Crystal Light. All of these methods share most of the basic tenets with XP, especially the high level of user involvement and the importance of rapid prototyping.

¹²Throughout this section, I use XP and agile development interchangeably since XP is arguably the best known and best documented of all the agile development approaches.

¹³My own personal opinion is that automated refactoring tools will become more and more important to the success of agile development projects.

¹⁴In true team environments, the team succeeds -- individuals only succeed as part of the team.

¹⁵Recently, a friend of mine related a story of why "team teaching" had failed in a specific university setting. It was concluded that team teaching failed because many, if not most, university professors go into teaching because they prefer working alone. Even if team teaching might be better for students, it didn't fit the personality profiles of the teachers.

¹⁶As you can see in our earlier discussion, agile development is clearly not an undisciplined programming approach; however, it's how many people from a more traditional standpoint see the movement.

¹⁷The CMM folks maintain that CMM and agile development are compatible. Barry Boehm in a recent dialogue with Council Fellow Tom DeMarco maintained that some CMM Level 5 organizations are working to integrate the two approaches.

¹⁸To quote Council Fellow Tom DeMarco, "The truth will make you free, but first it will make you miserable!"

¹⁹Fragging is when an officer is shot, usually in the back, by his own troops.

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