In the 1980s, Ed Yourdon was very visible and influential in the software development industry. Arguably, Ed was the equivalent to what Martin Fowler is today – a high profile technical guru. Then at some point, it seemed like Mr. Yourdon disappeared off the face of the earth. He really didn’t vanish, but he’s much less visible now than he was back then. He’s actually making big bux serving as an expert witness in software disaster court cases.
Since I enjoyed Ed’s work on structured systems analysis/design (before the OO juggernaut took off) and I’ve read several of his articles and books over the years, I was delighted to discover this InfoQ interview: “Ed Yourdon on the State of Agile and Trends in IT“.
In the interview, Ed states that he’s asked many CIOs what “agile” means to them. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of them said that it enabled developers to write software faster. Of course, there was no mention of the higher quality and/or the elevated espirit de corps that’s “supposed” to hitch a free ride on the agile gravy train.
