PragPub 2010-11: Issue #17 by The Pragmatic Bookshelf

Author:The Pragmatic Bookshelf
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: PragPub—Monthly Magazine
Publisher: The Pragmatic Bookshelf, LLC
Published: 2010-11-01T04:00:00+00:00

Agile is Ongoing Interaction

Specifying a software system precisely is fundamentally impossible, because the activity of software development, and the interaction of users with the software, is by its nature not subject to rigorous specification.

Instead, what we have is an ongoing interaction. The relationship of agile software development, the software itself, and the users of that software is exactly the same relationship as that of performers, the performance, and the audience.

We agile software people put on a show; the audience either buys tickets every two weeks or else they leave. Everything else is irrelevant. The trick is to put on a good show. The trick for us as writers about software is to show others the way to get that standing ovation.

Chris McMahon is a software tester and former professional bass player. His background in software testing is both deep and wide, having tested systems from mainframes to web apps, from the deepest telecom layers and life-critical software to the frothiest eye candy. Chris has been part of the greater public software testing community since about 2004, both writing about the industry and contributing to open source projects like Watir, Selenium, and FreeBSD. His recent work has been to start the process of prying software development from the cold, dead hands of manufacturing and engineering into the warm light of artistic performance. A dedicated agile telecommuter on distributed teams, Chris lives deep in the remote Four Corners area of the U.S. Luckily, he has email: [email protected].

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