Jeff Mesnil
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Qui Veut Aller Loin Ménage Sa Monture

October 21, 2011

That's the French proverb for "Slow and steady wins the race".

Uncle Bob:

Rich [Hickey] makes the point that sprinters run fast, but not long. Then he says that Agile "solved" this problem by just firing the starting gun over and over again in quick succession. He grins, and the audience laughs. Then he goes on to say that continuous sprinting does not necessarily makes systems simple, and simplicity is the real key to speed.

That is exactly the issue I have with Scrum and other so-called "agile" methods. It sacrifices long-term design and overall quality for fast short-term hacks. Sometimes there are no shortcuts for long hard work to end up with something simple.

Simple and easy are not interchangeable concepts...

As a bonus fo French readers, a post with a different perspective on the different meanings of simplicity by a colleague, Johan Martinsonn: Pas si simple de faire simple.