Luke Hohmann - Position Statement
In 1996, I published Journey of the Software Professional, which explored aspects of cognitive psychology and organizational behavior associated with successful software development. Since then, my own journey has motivated me to enthusiastically commit to Agile development. Along the way, I’ve enjoyed participating in the ongoing maturation of the Agile Software Development community, as a practitioner, organizer of conferences, author, educator, and consultant.
The Agile Software Development community is becoming an increasingly diverse ecosystem. We are growing through the many organizations who are adopting Agile, who find challenges in the basic practices, and look to the community for help. Other organizations, who have been practicing agile for years, find themselves grappling with more complex issues. The larger ecosystem of service providers, educators, consultants, and tool vendors, are all evidence that Agile has “crossed the chasm”. No longer can Agile be considered a “new” way to approach software development. It is both new and mature, depending on context. As Agile moves into mature practice, it must embrace and address the concerns of executives who fund development initiatives and the stakeholders who are affected by Agile practices. We must also work to understand the concerns that many organizations have about adopting Agile, and help them understand the ramifications of Agile.
I believe that the community is struggling with this complexity. As a member of the Board I will advocate the development of programs to help our community deal with this complexity. Since I am not entirely certain how to make this happen, I will seek the feedback and guidance of the community in this process. For example, at the Agile 2006 conference, Enthiosys collaborated with conference participants to better understand want they want in future conferences. We must extend this collaboration to include a larger and more representative population of our ecosystem. I will advocate doing all of these in an open manner, including sharing the results of our research directly with our members so that they can know how the Board is working to better meet their needs.
( - Public) permalink
