Calling for your input

[Avron Olshewsky]

Dear all,

The OpenCTO project is taking shape. In the last few weeks I have been meeting and hearing from a large number of entrepreneurs and
product development managers. Whilst the idea of creating a neat process, methodology and guidelines for creating software, especially
for the startup context, is an ambitious one, I believe that things can certainly be significantly better than they are at the moment.

Entrepreneurs are constantly acquiring resources to help them realize their ideas and vision. Unfortunately, they often hire external
consultants who do not provide a consistent service and do not work to any reasonable methodology.  This immediately puts the entrepreneur at risk,
significantly reducing the chances of even producing an MVP.

Most of the people I have spoken too, mention the word "Agile" when discussing process. However, when I delve into the details of what
is meant by "Agile" I find that the word is meaningless. In most cases, there is no process being followed and therefore it is not surprising
to learn that many entrepreneurs are wasting vast sums of money developing software that will never work. I am not taking about the lack of business models,
marketing etc, simply that the software they think they need (correctly or incorrectly) is never properly developed.

As software developers, architects, project managers and consultants, is there something we can do about this situation ?

We are starting the debate here  and I thank all those that have already contributed. There are a number of very good engineers on this mailing list
and I am confident that your input, experience and insights will go a long way to making a contribution to at least solving elements of this problem.

Best regards
Avron Olshewsky

--

http://opencto.com
Avron Olshewsky +44 7508407 065

[Adrian Howard]

On 14 May 2012, at 10:31, Avron Olshewsky wrote:
[snip]

> Most of the people I have spoken too, mention the word "Agile" when
> discussing process. However, when I delve into the details of what
> is meant by "Agile" I find that the word is meaningless.

[snip]

Agile is most definitely not meaningless. There are certainly people out there who *say* there doing agile, and aren't, but that doesn't make the term meaning free.

Cheers,

Adrian

[Avron Olshewsky]

Adrian,

I agree with you, it does not have to be meaningless. However, it is merely a term and unfortunately more often than not, maybe due to the word itself, it is being misused.
In the past if one was developing software without much of a methodology and someone asked the question of what the methodology was, the answer would be .... "hmmm, none really". These days,
the answer is almost always ... "hmmm, we're agile" or something similar. I guess it is up to experienced professionals to implement proper method behind the term "agile"

[Yoav Aviram]

I agree with the both of you. I truly believe in the value Agile has brought to the tech industry, and to start-up companies in particular. I particularly like it because before Agile there was a big void. That said, I agree with Avron that too often companies claim to have embraced some Agile variant while in fact only implementing the most convenient parts. These companies may think they have adopted a methodology, while in fact they have not. I think the reason for this may be our tendency to think that our intuition is always correct. When challenge to think differently we rather look the other way. In that sense, in many cases the adoption of Agile is done because its fissionable.

Yoav.