tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20879007.post3289806455801757286..comments2010-01-05T18:31:18.269-08:00Cliff McCollumnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20879007.post-82013854058225594002010-01-05T18:31:18.269-08:002010-01-05T18:31:18.269-08:00Yaztromo, I don&#39;t entirely disagree with you. You are correct that the Web 2.0 world is littered with failed products that nobody wanted. But I&#39;d bet that there are far less failed PROJECTS in the Web 2.0 world than in the Enterprise world.<br /><br />My major point is that enterprise customers demand that developers follow a process that rarely achieves success. If we could get the enterprise itself to accept an agile way to iterating towards a solution, we would see far more successful enterprise projects (and products).<br /><br />I agree that a company spending million of dollars on a software product wants it to be successful. My thesis is that the insistence on delivering a 100% complete product in Big-Bang fashion at project end (typical waterfall) is virtually assured to be incompatible with the primary goal of success.<br /><br />Software developers have figured this out. Many other engineering disciplines have figured this out. But enterprise software customers don&#39;t seem to have figured this out yet.Cliff McCollumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14812542206467089528noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20879007.post-9035809627497804362010-01-05T15:57:54.488-08:002010-01-05T15:57:54.488-08:00It&#39;s not really fair to compare the &quot;winners&quot; of one model with the &quot;losers&quot; of another, to make the claim that one is better than the other. Waterfall <i>can</i> work, and has worked very successfully for a variety of large projects long before Agile came about.<br /><br />It&#39;s also a bit disingenious to compare what amounts to free services to paid-for software. When you become a new user of a free service, your expectations are typically quite low: if it works you stick with it, if not, you leave it. How many Agile, Web 2.0 social network projects akin to Twitter and Facebook projects litter the wayside of development over the last ten years? More than I care to count. And how many of those iterative changes serve only to annoy a large number of (generally powerless) customers? Just look at what happens every time Facebook releases a new iteration that causes even a minor UI change -- some segment of the user population gets into an uproar over it.<br /><br />A large enterprise paying customer that is investing thousands or millions of dollars into a software project has different expectations. They don&#39;t always want to weather bugs, half-implemented features, and constant feature churn. And nor should they have to. An enlightened customer will understand that it&#39;s in their long-term best interest to be involved in the iterative cycle, but in an age of quarterly profit reporting, it can be hard to justify having enlightened ideals that incur a quantifiable cost, but that may only pay off years down the road.<br /><br />Yaz.Yaztromohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14600324517677880732noreply@blogger.com