To agile or not to agile, that is the question
Recently in the company I work for we started some software redesign and hired a consulting company to help us, which use agile methodologies (and in our team we don’t). It was an interesting experience.
In the past few years agile development was much talked about, but is it still as high regarded as before? I am not sure. Definitely for some projects it would fit perfectly, but for others may not be good at all and frankly I think it has been misused in many cases as an excuse for not doing something right.
Is the agile methodology really more productive? Would it actually help develop a better product? I don’t think so by itself – it would much depend on the implementation of the process and the dedication of the team. As in any team if there is no discipline – there are no good results with either approach.
For outsourcing I think the waterfall is definitely the better approach. Imagine outsourcing your project and having a consulting company deliver in the end a bunch of code with no documentation because it is “not necessary”. I don’t think the projects should be over-documented to a point where you just won’t read the documentation, but there should be some to the appropriate level.
Choosing the right approach is very difficult IMO and depends on many factors like who is going to implement and maintain the project, management decisions, size, etc.
The power supply is really small. It actually has foldable “ears”, so you can tie the cable around them to save space. Kudos to Apple for style and design again for it (see the image to the right).