David Starr argues that Agile doesn’t work because business operations aren’t Agile, and his remedy is to have Agile business practices that embrace change: “Embrace continuous integration of the enterprise.” Customers don’t want continuous change; they want a great product the first time they purchase it, so they can spend more time serving their customers and invest more money on other important needs. While your product delivery is most important to you and your company, it’s likely not the most important need for your customer. Agile simply solves the wrong problem.

Delivering software requires courage. In “Extreme Programming Explained”, Kent Beck explains, “Sometimes courage manifests as patience.” The practice of software development requires the leaders and the team to have faith in their development practices and the courage to stay with them when fear gives you doubts. Who said software development is easy?

They said it wouldn’t happen again, but it did.  The American auto industry wouldn’t be caught unprepared again when another energy crisis were to hit the economy. Sure, consumers were all too complicit by indulging …