Mon, 08 Mar 2004
Unit of measurement elected head of standards board
Sometimes I forget that the world is also a place of
delightful whimsy.
(Via
Ben Hyde)
## Posted at 08:47 in category /junk
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More on standards
I went all alarmist about work beginning on a standard titled
"Recommended Practice for Establishing and Managing Software
Development Efforts Using Agile Methods". Since then, the
Agile
Alliance board has been in contact with the guy heading it up,
Scott Duncan. One board member writes:
[Scott] explained to me that it was initiated by
government procurement folks who are interested in acquiring software
developed with agile methods. They are looking for guidance about how
to organize the acquisition process to do this. My sense is that this
represents a growing acceptance of agile methods, so it is a good
thing. [...]
Scott says he wants to avoid an 'Agile Software Development' standard,
but instead wants to give guidance to the customers of agile
software. They need to realize what kind of commitment they, as a
customer, must make. They also need to know also what kinds of
disciplines to look for in an organization claiming to be agile [...]
Since I am interested in how agile software development can be done
under contract, I decided to join the standards committee. You are
invited to join as well, since Scott would like good representation
from the agile community. Work will mainly be done via e-mail or
discussion group to begin, you do not have to be an IEEE member to
work on the standard (only to vote), and membership from outside the
US is solicited. Contact Scott at nacnuds@tsys.com if you are
interested. [Bem note: I reversed the letters before the at sign to
irk spammers.]
I asked Scott if I could mention this on my blog, and he wrote:
That would be wonderful as long as people understand the commitment to
actively participate in the work, i.e., review materials, provide feedback,
participate on conference calls, research issues, etc. There are always
more people who express "interest," i.e., are willing to get copies of
draft standards and emails keeping them up to date on status, than there
are people who actually devote time to the work. If people just want to look
over the standard in a reasonably final draft form, then being a part of the
ballot pool, not the Working Group, is the best approach for them. As long
as that is made clear to folks, I'd be glad to have a lot more folks from the
agile community involved.
Thanks for asking and offering to help distribute the information. As this
the effort to get this started has been in the works for a long time, I do want
to begin actual work on the content ASAP, so please let people know that
as well so they contact me right away.
I'm still a tad nervous about the "what kinds of disciplines to
look for in an organization claiming to be agile", since I'm rather
a fan of Ken Schwaber's notion of
agile
epiphanies (annoying registration required; scroll down when
you get through) as opposed to
hard-and-fast
rules.
But,
on balance, I suspect I was needlessly alarmist.
## Posted at 08:38 in category /agile
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