Presentation by Scott Ambler

I've been interested in/using agile techniques for several years now, so it was fun to hear somebody with an open view commenting on the current state of things.  This is what I took away:

• Agile seems to be getting mainstream.
• Co-location improves chances of a succesfull project, and offshoring decreases those chances.  This probably doesn't mean you shouldn't offshore, but that there's work to be done.
• Agile allows to change what determines 'success': it doesn't have to be "on time - on budget',  but could be eg best quality - best ROI - etc.  You should ask your stakeholders this question before you start
• Agile doesn't really say anything about the lifecycle outside the development part, but you have to do these things! (setting up the project, deploying, migrating, running production, etc).  We should think about this!
• Scaling Test driven dev: only does the details, but not the global picture. What about modeling, business tests, usability tests, integration...?
• What about agile documentation?
• How to handle the data in agile? How to apply the agile techniques to the database ! www.agiledata.org.  He really has a point here: developers should know what a db can do and use those features when applicable!
• lean development governance - www.ibm.com/developerworks.  Enable motivation of people by making things simple. There's many more on the site - boy, this guy knows what he's talking about....
  "the site might give you some ammo to steer things in the right direction' I want to have that document and forward it to my boss ;-)