<story><title>My 20-Year Experience of Software Development Methodologies</title><url>https://zwischenzugs.com/2017/10/15/my-20-year-experience-of-software-development-methodologies/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>tw1010</author><text>I find it somewhat amusing that this article doesn&amp;#x27;t pick up on the fact that it is furthering the root cause of this very issue in the act of basing it on the book Sapiens. A core problem with these mythological trends is that they reduce world views down to easy-to-communicate little stories. This is useful for propagating ideas from person to person, but it necessarily has to be pithy and avoid too much detail. What we aught to do is to notice this historical pattern, and to take a stand against it. We should try to not be too persuaded by the book, or methodology, of the month (Sapiens right now) but to try to go back to the hard, tough, classics. We should try to build a foundation based on actual psycological and sociological research, instead of being steered too much by the, understandably attractive, mimetic pulls of water cooler philosophy.</text></comment>
<story><title>My 20-Year Experience of Software Development Methodologies</title><url>https://zwischenzugs.com/2017/10/15/my-20-year-experience-of-software-development-methodologies/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>mannykannot</author><text>I am ambivalent about &amp;quot;the difficulty lies not in defining [useful software methodologies], but in convincing others to follow [them].&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Currently, I see too much faith being put in methods of dubious utility. I see techniques, that may be effective when applied judiciously in some circumstances, being promoted to universal principles. In particular, I see the failure of waterfall being taken to mean that any attempt to think ahead is counterproductive.&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, ten years before the scope of this article, Barry Boehm took on the waterfall model with an iterative one that emphasized frequent reevaluation of where you are, where you are going, and what impediments you face [1]. The fact that this article begins with waterfall supports the notion that adoption is the problem. Perhaps Boehm&amp;#x27;s model was largely overlooked precisely because it was not dogmatic enough to promote zealotry?&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Spiral_model&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Spiral_model&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>