Over the past few years, I have observed the agile movement and I feel that I have to put down some of my thoughts regarding this. The main reason for me writing it is to clarify my thoughts, and also, but not necessarily, to invite some feedback.
I cannot dispute the fact that in the process of evangelizing it, the people have talked about some software practices that contribute to making better software. But somehow I feel that the useful practices are all those that have to be part of writing software in general, rather than being attributed to a process.
Its my belief that there are mostly only two qualities that a developer has to have in order to deliver successful software. This is of course only in context on enterprise software development where the developer in employed to create and maintain internal software systems within the company. The two qualities are: one - not being afraid to go in and change code and two - constant communication of the status of his work.
The second one is an auxillary capability, since it solely exists to put people mind's at rest, so that they don't bother him/her while he's actually trying to solve a problem. I would think its an equally necessary quality to possess as the primary one because when it comes to deploying a fix or a system, its never only about the code. There's always a dynamic between the current users that have to look for a workaround or need to be informed about systems that will be down, etc.
In such an environment, if the developer possesses the confidence of being able to tackle changing the codebase or developing something new with the confidence that it can always be changed later, there's not many more practices that he needs to religiously follow to deliver working software.
This confidence comes from constantly learning from a good amount of experience as well as possessing a couple of tools that come in handy. I will delve on this aspect more in the next post.
