On 4/14/07, Gerhard Fiedler <lists@connectionbrazil.com> wrote:
> Vitaliy wrote:
>
> >> But most customers don't really care that much about small deliveries.
> >> While these are good in many aspects (and one of them is to make sure
> >> the customer sees progress and remains confident), the customer's
> >> satisfaction comes only with the final delivery, of the full scope,
> >> within budget and schedule.
> >
> > I strongly disagree.
> >
> > With Agile, the customer makes a list of features, and prioritizes them.
> > Then you go down the list. Each iteration resulting in yet another
> > feature. It's up to the customer to say, "OK -- that's enough" at any
> > point in the project (even early), and he ends up with useful, *working*
> > software. Agile helps avoid feature creep.
>
> It seems you're not working much for customers -- are you? Or are you doing
> more in-house development? Those are two quite different situations. I bet
> you won't easily find a customer who hires a team, pays the team, and just
> takes whatever comes, and says "well, if I can't get it all, I'll just be
> happy with less"... :)
>
> Most want to have up-front a scope, a schedule and a price (with payment
> terms based on delivered scope and schedule). All three may be staged, but
> I haven't yet met a customer who was happy to pay and just take what he'll
> get.

Agreed, and well-stated, Gerhard.  My customers want to know what
we're going to DELIVER from day one, and would never sign a PO before
they had a full spec of what they're going to receive in writing.

I find Agile development to be idealistic rubbish, but typical of
engineers who've never worked in direct customer support, deployment,
or integration roles of large/complex systems.  It "looks good on
paper" to the poor guy who's manager just signed him up to do the
impossible, so many tout how wonderful it is... but it only works on
large INTERNAL projects, unless the customer is insane and/or blindly
throwing money at whatever problem they're trying to solve.  (Thus,
its popularity with consulting firms.  No hard deadlines, no end to
the incoming cash.)

The fact that Agile exists doesn't bother me, it's the amount of
uptake it has had in the industry -- a sure sign the software industry
as a whole hasn't really grown up yet and started to do real
engineering.

Nate
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