I promise not to write a novel this time around, just a brief post with links to information that I found valuable during this past week...
Larry O'Brien, whose 'Microsoft Watch' column in SD Times magazine I follow closely, points out the fallacy of several fundamental assumptions of software development--the assumptions that, to use his words, "were gospel" just a few years ago. The first victim is the superprogrammer productivity myth--you know, the one where a superprogrammer can code 20 times faster than a regular one. According to Larry, there really is no data (i.e., no scientific studies with a fixed control group) supporting this assertion. The superprogrammer axiom was popularized by Tom Demarco in his famous Peopleware book, and the chart below (respectfully borrowed from Larry's blog) laid the foundation for the belief that superprogrammers exist. While the chart itself does point out that productivity levels vary between different programmers, it's hardly enough on its own to generate a religious acceptance around the concept...
The second axiom revisited by Larry was the exponential increase of costs in software development over time, as shown in this graph (again, Larry's property):
William Taylor and Polly Labarre point out in "Mavericks at Work" that a true maverick would take a commonly accepted state of affairs, disagree with it, challenge it, and create something remarkable. Such was the case with Kent Beck, where he challenged the assumptions documented by the graph above with his Extreme Programming approach to software development. Now, we have something more closely resembling this:
Speaking of Agile Software Development, Steve McConnell is convinced that soon we will no longer refer to that approach as "Agile"--it will be simply referred to as Software Development. With South Florida's Architecture Group changing their name to "Agile," I have to concur.