Comments on: Is agile development a religion?

By: James

James — Sun, 22 May 2011 18:18:40 +0000

A zealot doesn’t reason and follows blindly. When evidence comes along that may counter what a zealot believes the zealot takes that as an attack rather than a potential improvement to be looked into. From what I’ve seen so far, many people who explore agile take what the find useful and leave the rest. Nothings perfect, just reason, experiment, and take what you find useful. Every person, environment, and situation is different — if you take the time to learn what Agile, XP, Lean, this, that, the next has to offer you will likely be more prepared (with adequate experience and education) to handle a given situation.

By: dagfinn

dagfinn — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 20:04:46 +0000

I agree. Of course, there language wars, editor wars and all that. And the wars are often based in ignorance about the tools the particular warriors zealots are not using. They often just assume that what they haven’t heard of doesn’t exist. I particularly remember one ardent Microsoft hater I knew many years age who, on seeing a PowerPoint example, exclaimed “oh, can you do that with PowerPoint?” Not that I particularly love Microsoft Office, but what’s the point of bashing a piece of software when you don’t even know what it’s capable of?

By: Bill Karwin

Bill Karwin — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 17:43:19 +0000

I use the term “fanatic” for someone who is very enthusiastic about their favored subject. But one can be a fanatic about Agile Development without demanding that everyone else adopt it.

I use the term “zealot” for someone who can’t abide people who don’t share their fanaticism. They are compelled to advocate for their favored subject, and try to “convert” anyone who will listen (and some others besides).

I’ve known zealots for Eclipse, for Agile Development, for Ruby on Rails, for Cloud Computing, etc. Oddly, some of the people who are the strongest zealots for some specific tool or method still can’t write good software.

By: Pádraic Brady

Pádraic Brady — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 16:59:12 +0000

You probably know my take already – I’m a zealot . But practically any Agile related post I make always states there is no one true path. There is always room for manouvering, borrowing, adapting and even outright rejecting from any body of knowledge. Some stuff works, other stuff fails – every project, web shop and individual is different with varying needs. Criticism is valuable when it critiques – not when it’s an accusatory rant that doesn’t add to the debate.