An agile pioneer versus an agile ruined my life critic [Video]

A public argument led to friendship and mutual support of agile development

Credit: PeopleImages.com – Yuri A / Shutterstock

Is the mighty concept of agile software development, championed as the better way to develop software by building it in short iterations, striking out, or is it just misunderstood?

Agile development has been experiencing a backlash lately, getting a particular skewering in technology management consultant Daniel Markham’s blog entry, “Agile Ruined My Life.” Among other things, Markham argues that agile is a marketing term, that conflicting advice is offered on how to do agile, and that “fake success stories” abound.

[ See InfoWorld’s November 2010 special report: “Agile programming 10 years on: Did it deliver?” ]

Now, a longtime pioneer of the agile concept has had enough and is taking a stand.

In a recent conference presentation, Jon Kern, a signer of The Agile Manifesto for Software Development 10 years ago last month, defended agile. “It’s not agile [that is the problem],” he said. “It’s people doing …