Non Stop Portals

I interviewed a local Chief Information Officer today and asked "Would you recommend Agile software development to another company?" Well, maybe was the response. I am not going to name the Executive for fear that my interviewing skills may not accurately reflect his position on the subject.  However, he had some interesting comments.

Why do we insist on creating a replacement titles for project manager and project sponsor?  Call the person whatever you want, someone is accountable for the successful completion of a project.  If a project fails due to poor leadership, someone is going to have to make some changes if they want to survive within the organization.

Is Agile just a way for team members to get by without giving estimates and getting things done?

How useful is it for users to get a piece of working software that doesn't do very much?  How would you respond if you purchased a car that was 90% done.  Getting lots of small pieces of working software that doesn't do anything doesn't really boost the confidence of the users that the team is doing a good job.

When was the last time that any development team used a waterfall methodology the way it is described in Agile training classes?  Prototyping and rapid development tools have been around for 25+ years.  These tools have consistently been used to validate user requirements and build software applications.  Iterative development has existed for a long time.

It is my opinion that this view is fostered by the fact that most of the projects within this organization are relatively short in duration.  Big projects are broken into smaller phases which correspond to a release in Agile terminology.

All of the comments were interesting.  We only had a short amount of time to chat and I did not have the opportunity to learn about how the organization learns from past mistakes and improves processes for the future.  It's also a reminder that Agile may not fit all project types and/or organizations.