Blah.Blah.Blog

Punk music primarily developed as a counterpoint to the predominance of pretentious big-hair, stadium rock that was so popular towards the end of the decade in question.

Agile development primarily developer as a counterpoint to the predominance of heavyweight development processes abounding in the development space in recent years.

In both cases, there were bleeding edge practitioners who's efforts were largely unrecognized because they were so far ahead of the curve, but who are now revered as minor deities in their respective circles (think MC-5 and the likes of early Kent Beck and his fellow band of Smalltalkers).

Similarities can also be found in their respective attitudes towards their craft: both camps exhibited/announced a strong desire to tear away the unnecessary baggage attached to their subject and reduce it to it's base elements. Simplicity and purity of expression was/is valued over style and showmanship.

In both cases, the rise of these new forces triggered a large amount of fear in their respective populi. Both sides were/are derided as charlatans and heretics.

So what does drawing this long and tenuous bow of similarity give us? Well, possibly nothing, but if you reflect on the genesis of the punk movement (and believe this load of hogwash), it might shed some light on where the Agile methods might end up in 5 years time or so.

• Like the punk movement, the Agile camp has split into distinct elements; DSDM, Scrum, XP and the rest are the equivalents of grunge, industrial, gothic rock or any of the other bastard children of the punk family tree.

• Many of the Godfathers of punk are still in the scene. Although the Ramone family is diminishing with each passing year, John Lydon, Jello Biafra, Henry Rollins, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, Nick Cave and Mick Jones are still out there, to a greater or lesser degree. One would assume that, given the unlikely occurrence of non-caffeine substance-abuse within the Agile community, Uncy Kent, Martin Fowler, Ron Jeffries, Ward Cunningham and the like will still be around in the industry in the next 20 years.

• Perhaps the most encouraging sign for those struggling to introduce/champion Agile development at the moment is the fact that punk rock has, with a few exceptions, been completely integrated into the music industry and few people even blink twice at the punk bands of today.

• As a caveat to the above statement, people adopting these epithets can occasionally loose sight of the very reason these movements began in the first place. At the risk of offending their fan base (and being bludgeoned to death by pack of skateboard-wielding youth), bands like Offspring, Alien Ant Farm and probably a whole posse of others can be considered punk in name but not in spirit. Similarly, you do tend to come across people who talk the Agile talk, but definitely don't walk the walk. Likewise, a puritanical Agilist with no desire/ability to reflect on the underlying reason for their actions is as bad as the blinkered heavyweight process weenie who just cannot come to terms with "that awful racket those kids are into!".
  
  

So I'm quite happy to accept that punk rock looked upon overblown stage-produced light shows, dry ice enshrouded stages and 10 minute drum solos in the same way the Agile community looks upon voluminous documentation, year-long projects planned down to the quarter hour and architectural blueprints signed off in triplicate before a line of code is written.

Given this, the tried-and-true Ramones song-writing philosophy of "4 count intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, chorus, finish" (all within 3-4 chords and 2-3 minutes) which so epitomizes early punk rock is really their way of doing "the simplest thing that could possible work" :-)