I’m often asked why I do what I do. It’s simple really.
In the late 1990’s I was an early adopter of Extreme Programming while working at Lucent. I was in a leadership role, leading software development and test teams, and it seemed to me to be an interesting way of effectively building software.
I had struggled with Waterfall approaches for years. I’d even worked hard at refining my estimation processes. But my projects were inevitably challenged and many failed to meet critical criteria. That is – projects that met all aspects of our stakeholder expectations.
When I stumbled on XP, it just…resonated with my experience. It also resonated with my leadership style and beliefs that PEOPLE were the central success proposition in software efforts.
Not: risk plans, test plans, project plans, management spreadsheets, cost accounting, estimates, system requirement specifications, metrics, status reports, etc.
