Software development is an interesting practice. It is a field that is filled with strong opinions, and just about every practitioner is convinced they know the right way to write software. This starts with languages and third-party libraries, but continues through the day to day ceremony of developing software.

As a consultant working in the 2010s, I practiced Agile software development for many years. Agile has come to mean many many different things to many different people. More often than not, it’s associated with buzzwords used to make executives happy.

However, I’ve seen Agile work phenomenally well… once. During that project, I learned a tremendous amount about what does work. I also learned a lot about what doesn’t work in… every other project I worked on.

I joined John Chidgey on his wonderful Pragmatic podcast in order to try to convince John that Agile isn’t totally bunk. On the episode I discussed the many many ways Agile can fail, and how to avoid some of those pitfalls.

Agile may or may not be for you, but I think the episode came out really well.