Agile, Iterative Development, and Control Freaks
There is a persistent myth — particularly prevalent amongst control freaks— that if you get the requirements detailed enough, you can assembly-line your way through development . Dig deep enough, and you’ll find that to them, Agile is the same as Iterative Development . Oh, they absolutely get the bit about “ user feedback ”, “ short sprints ”, “ incremental releases ”, and so on. However, in their minds, all of these steps apply only to the development process, i.e., you do all of these things after you’ve nailed down all the requirements, as shown below From their perspective, you just iterate through the development cycle in a succession of sprints, in what is basically a linear progression. In each sprint, for example you cycle through Design → Development → Release → Review for 10% of the requirements, and at the end of 10 sprints, voila! you’re done! Oh, if you want to get a little pedantic, t...