Organizations often try to adopt a software development methodology, in hopes of reducing the risk of cost and schedule overruns in their software development project. Veterans of previous methodology adoption attempts roll their eyes or actively resist, while less experienced team members drool in anticipation of some order and predictability. In this post I describe how software development methodology adoption efforts can fail, based on my own experiences.
This is a personal perspective, so it doesn’t go back all the way to the early days of computer science. It starts when I started paying attention, which was in the 1990s. Nevertheless, I think it’s pretty accurate with respect to what was going on in the 1990s through today (late 2015).
Here goes.
Once upon a time, in the final years of the 20th century, there were some experienced software folks who had been through some successful projects and some failed projects, who had developed a sense for what to do and what not to do in certain situations.
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