Gerald M. Weinberg has spent the past 45 years transforming software organizations by emphasizing the interaction of technical and human issues. Here, read what he has to say about Agile methodologies.

Q1: Why use Agile methods?
Because they work. If they don't work in your organization, there's no reason whatsoever to use them—certainly not so you can brag about being "agile." When you do make them work, they make projects more manageable. You may or may not get quicker project completion. You may or may not save money. But you will get better customer satisfaction, and you will stay on top of your projects and be able to predict how much they will cost and how long they will take. You may or may not stay out of trouble, but if trouble comes, you'll see it coming in time to do something about it. That's what project management is all about.

Q2: Biggest challenge of implementing Agile methods?
People tend to prefer familiarity to comfort. It's unfamiliar, so your challenge is to manage the human reactions to change. For example, instead of pushing every team to be "agile," I like to have the management say, "Agile methods are not for everyone. We want to start with the best qualified teams, so if you want your team to be chosen for our first trial, you will have to make a presentation to management about why you are best qualified." (In other words, what is your "story.") This approach has worked well, so well, in fact, that in one case in Australia, the programmers' union came in and insisted that everyone be given an equal chance to try these new methods.

I have written extensively about change artistry in the fourth volume of my Quality Software Management series, "Anticipating Change."

Q3: In what environment will Agile be most successful?
The change to agile methods will be most successful in those organizations with an agile management approach to converting to agile methods. Unfortunately, I've observed a number of organizations where agile methods are introduced like a waterfall project--a huge up-front planning effort, then an attempt to convert an entire organization at one fell swoop. To be successful, the conversion has to be in small increments, with corrections made at each increment.

Q4: What is the future of Agile?
First we will drop the capital A. Then we will drop the term "agile" altogether. Agile methods will be successful if and when we stop seeing them as anything other than normal, sensible, professional methods of developing software.

Q5: Can you recommend a book, blog, podcast, website, or other information source to our readers that you find interesting or intriguing right now?

For more than fifty years, I've been trying to help organizations improve their software project management through training, consulting, and non-fiction books. I've had some success, but I've always felt I could do more. For the past few years, I've been trying two new approaches:

1. The Amplifying Your Effectiveness (AYE) Conference , where we concentrate on the human activities necessary to foster organizational change for the better. Through the experiential exercises of the conference, we help people learn soft solutions to hard problems, solutions they take back to their organizations to help them implement changes like the transformation to agile processes.

2. Fiction, or what I call "nerd novels." Experience is the best teacher, but even in a long career, one person can only experience a few large projects. In my novels, I embed real stories, real lessons, in a fictional matrix that is engaging enough to make them feel like real experiences. Hopefully, these stories will get through to readers, as have the stories in my non-fiction books. For many people, fiction is simply more real than non-fiction. So far, the experiment seems to be working, according to readers of my first published novel, The Aremac Project .

About the author

Gerald M. Weinberg (Jerry to his friends) writes "nerd novels," such as The Aremac Project, about how brilliant people produce quality work. Before taking up his science fiction career, he published books on human behavior, including Weinberg on Writing: The Fieldstone Method, The Psychology of Computer Programming and an Introduction to General Systems Thinking. He also wrote books on leadership including Becoming a Technical Leader, The Secrets of Consulting (Foreword by Virginia Satir), More Secrets of Consulting, and the four-volume Quality Software Management series. He incorporates his knowledge of science, engineering, and human behavior into all of his software consulting work
as well as his writing.

Winner of the Warnier Prize and the Stevens Award for his writing on software quality, he is also a charter member of the Computing Hall of Fame in San Diego. His website and blogs may be found at http://www.geraldmweinberg.com .

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