Getting Blasted

I got blasted for the following quote in a recent eWeek article:

“If you’re in a large environment that is bureaucratic, filled with politics and has a [software development] process like the waterfall flavor of RUP [Rational Unified Process] what do you do?” Knoernschild asked. “It’s been my experience that the number one thing you can do is continuous integration. That can spawn so many business benefits.”

The blaster suggested that I have no idea what I’m talking about because there is no “waterfall flavor of RUP”. What I believe the blaster missed is the tongue in my cheek when I made the comment.

As is often the case, the quote didn’t capture the context of the statement. Many teams, when transitioning to an iterative process, commit a number of mistakes. One of the more common mistakes is to establish iterations centered around the traditional lifecycle phases. When I made the comment, I also pointed out that the “waterfall flavor of RUP” typically consists of the first iteration being the requirements iteration, followed by the design iteration, followed by the construction iteration, followed by the testing iteration, etc.

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