Stephan Schwab

This morning I came across a post on a British blog about software architecture. They cite an article from the Finacial Times, which talks about a failed project between a British broadcasting station and EDS. The following is a citation from the blog post:

The Pragmatic Architect in Why do so many technology projects fail?:
Iterative and agile techniques have revolutionized the way that software development is performed, but our industry needs to take a step back and look at the way in which software projects are engaged. Why, when you read about so many high profile big budget software failures, do businesses still initiate software projects with “we want this, tell me how much it will cost”? *We* know that they’ll change their mind. *They* know that they’ll change their mind. So let’s change the engagement model, stop hiding behind fixed price contracts and work *together* to solve problems.

So what is needed to make people understand that they are better off not dreaming up project plans and create contracts based on them? Or is Brian Marick right when he says (video) that we as software developers should forget about the naysayers and stop trying to convince them? Probably it’s not so wrong to just do good work and let time tell the story instead of seeking to revolutionize the world. Those who do not believe that agile practices – done right and with experienced developers on board – help to create better quality software will get their chance to compare.

After speaking in Tampa and Miami at the beginning of this week I flew to Columbus, Ohio, yesterday night to visit my good friend Brian Sam-Bodden of Integrallis. What a difference between warm and sunny Florida ;-) As you can tell by the picture, snapped this morning, winter is coming and the temperature has already dropped quite a bit. While in Miami and Tampa it was about 27ºC/80ºC here in Ohio it’s only 4ºC/40ºF, which to me is not chilly but actually quite cold.

That temperature thing is particularly funny, as I, being German, should be used to low temperatures and show. Apparently the human adapts quite good to different climates. Now that I live in warmer places, such as Florida, the Dominican Republic and now Panama, my body has adapted to heat and I need to put on more warm clothes than I used to in the past. Quite funny this experience ;-)

On Tuesday, 20th of November 2007, the Miami Java Users Group gave me the opportunity to speak about Agile and our project management tool Savila. Unlike the day before in Tampa I was the third speaker in a row and we had to timebox our presentations a bit. So this presentation is a bit shorter than the one I delivered in Tampa. Here is the presentation as PDF for download.

The audience was of similar size, about 35 persons, and although we had to finish more or less on time we had some lively discussions about TDD and agile estimation techniques.

Many thanks to all of you in Miami.