Curiosities

Consider the following curious questions: Why is it that iterative development has been acknowledged ”even by those proposing sequential (waterfall) development ”as the right way to produce software, and yet

• XP is seen as a novel and even radical approach?

• So few, except those who have attempted to install an agile approach the past two or three years , officially use iterative development?

• There is so much resistance ”by managers and professional developers ”to doing things the right (iterative) way?

• Discussions between proponents and opponents of agile approaches are so heated and frequently emotional when both sides seem to agree, on the surface, on so many things?

• Better people has been recognized as the most promising silver bullet for addressing the software crisis, and yet almost all of our energy has been spent on creating better tools, methods , and processes instead of better people?

• Every effort to advance nonformal, iterative, artistic, and humane ways to develop software seem to be resisted and then co- opted and debased by formal software engineering?

• So few developers seem to be able to adopt and practice innovations such as objects and agile methods in a manner consistent with the intent and example of those who first advanced the innovation? (Don t believe this is a fair statement? Then why, two to four years after XP and agile were introduced, is that community spending so much time and effort wrestling with questions of certification? Why does Alan Kay say the object revolution has yet to occur?)

The long answer to these and similar questions is this book. The short answer, and hopefully part of your motivation for reading this book, is that software developers tend to be so focused on what and how that they forget to explore questions of why.