Agile Management

One of the best governance structures for modeling can be derived from Agile or XP programming. So what is Agile and how did it develop?

When software development began, it copied the project management methodology of engineers. The problem is that their context, however, is completely different. If you are building a bridge, it makes sense to plan the design in great detail, so that when you actually start the work you know exactly what to do and can build it in the least possible time. As much as possible, the thinking is done up front. It's much cheaper to spend a couple of years thinking about the project, than have a lot of equipment on-site, people milling around with nothing to do, while you figure out the next step.

This approach is called the waterfall. Everything cascades down from the previous step, separate streams of work coming together to create a great river.

When the waterfall approach was applied to software development about 70% of projects failed. We covered...