The Software Industry Today

A survey of factors leading to software development failure yields these commonly mentioned areas:

• Ill-defined goals and requirements

• Inaccurate estimates

• Unmanaged risks

• Poor communication

• Attempting to dictate scope, resources and timeline

• Belief that bigger staff shortens timelines

• Failing to adjust requirements

I'll add in a few of my own:

• Hyperfocus on process (rather than what the process is attempting to achieve)

• Too many (incompatible) tools

• No underlying science or data to support a given approach

• Clickbait influencers without actual results

• No traceability back to customer needs

• Poor stakeholder engagement

• Lack of adequate testing

Oddly, none of these have much of anything to do with Agile or Waterfall. So, what we have today is a huge list of what not to do, (likely) a set of horror stories about the bad things that can happen if we zealously adhere to any one approach and zero guidance about how to move forward.

Sounds like a golden opportunity for the right approach to come along.

What might that "right approach" look like?

The software industry is at a crossroads.

Some organizations which adopt Agile succeed in successfully delivering solutions; others do not. Some organizations which leverage Waterfall succeed in successfully delivering solutions; others do not.

The only thing we are certain of is that there's no correlation between the adoption of either approach and Successful Solution Delivery. So where does that leave us?

A Side Note

Agile recommends doing just enough to see if something's going to work and failing fast (and cheaply) if it doesn't so we can try something else.

It follows that ANY person or organization which tries to change your entire process, company-wide, in one massive shift inherently DOES NOT UNDERSTAND AGILE. Run away - fast. There are some definite quacks out there!