Thoughts on software development - neutral and sell mean the same thing

The stock market is one of the best places to learn both about yourself and the entire human race while at the same time enjoying the only really socially acceptable form of gambling.

There are tipsters on the stock market too, the financial analysts with a success rate right in between monkeys and palm readers. They are obeying a mechanism of rating a company on a simple system of Buy / Neutral /Sell. Now, you might be surprised to learn that Sell and Neutral mean the same thing for the market and that is Sell. Not even the Swiss want to be neutral towards a company in their portfolio, you should be buying only companies that go up.

You might ask, ok, that's all fine, but how is this affecting me and my software development project?

It does, because of the way we should read the agile manifesto.

Many companies small and big firmly state their agility and embrace this manifesto. In most cases not because they have actually read it but because the word itself is so round and full of juice, AGILE, makes you all worm and fuzzy on the inside, doesn't it? it kind of pays for itself isn't it?

Well, if you ever get to actually read it, the agile manifesto is simple and state that the agile companies should favour:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Remember the nice 270 / SixSigma / RationalRose/ Jira / 4 meetings a day, under a tree? Good, now learn to forget the ones your teams won't be missing.

Working software over comprehensive documentation

All the documentation that means something is with the code(eg javadoc). We also need a one page max README on the root of the repo that should inform a developer how to compile, install and run a piece of code without breaking anything. Any good developer, if he can run some code will be able to fix it. Well, except if a customer pays a lot for a document, if he does, he can have it.

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

So involve the client as often as possible to avoid costly scope errors. This means all your developers should collaborate with the client to some extent. At least aim to reduce the layers so your organisation looks more as an Apple and less as your average Onion.

Responding to change over following a plan

Software is soft because it is cheaper to change, at least while it is still young and flexible. We need prototypes as soon as possible so we can both learn what we need to build and allow our customer to alter the scope sooner rather than later.

Now, in the same Agile Manifesto the authors added Prozac :

while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more

This should be read: "we analysed software management and while we rate as BUY the items on the right, we are NEUTRAL on the items on the right".

So, if it is your company, or you just happen to care about the company in which you are working now, where are you going to put your money and your creative energy?