The Agile Executive

The graveyards are filled with marketers who over-hyped and sales reps who sold beyond the roadmap. Lack of coherence between desire and reality has proven lethal time and time again.

Last night in Agile Austin a panel was held about Agile in Borland prior to its recent acquisition by Micro Focus. One of the fascinating points brought up by the panel of ex-Borland employees was how the outbound Agile marketing hype was detrimental to continuous improvement inside. Declaring success with Agile to the outside world reduced the motivation (and the budget) to work hard at improving the methodology of their own Agile development teams. Expertise and energy of the various top notch Agile consultants that worked with Borland were primarily invested in marketing, not in R&D.

Beware your Agile hype! No matter what industry you are in, it had better be fully backed by corresponding excellence of the development teams.