How to Agile
paul.copplest.one
paul.copplest.one
> In the not-so-distant past, a Waterfall development approach was ubiquitous
This is not true. Unix was not developed with Waterfall. Neither were Microsoft's Altair BASIC, VisiCalc, gcc, Doom, vi, and so many other projects in the last 50 years.
> start with the minimum possible process
That's begging the question. "Minimum possible" is different for different people, even for the same project.
Take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structured_systems_analysis_an... for an example of "a waterfall method for the analysis and design of information systems."
One of the areas of consideration during the feasibility study is "Ethical – is the impact of the new system socially acceptable?" We can therefore assume that someone following the SSADM methodology at least formally considered ethics, which we can't with the Agile methodology.
Suppose you think that ethical considerations are part of the minimum possible process, and I don't.
Am I more Agile because my process is more minimal then yours? (Assuming we're both working in the same project space, where similar ethical considerations apply.)
My reading of the many agile advocacy essays is that we are equally agile because neither of us use Waterfall.
This informs my opinion that "Agile" is a pretty low bar.
Are there any processes which are neither Agile nor waterfall?
For example, is CPython development "Agile"? It's not waterfall - does that make it necessarily Agile?