You Call This Agile?
JoelonSoftware's most recent piece is about some of the fallacies in "Agile" software and some of the issues within it. We use Agile in some parts of the company, and have had success with that -- that said, there's always the peril that happens when development and other parts of the company have...miscommunication, which sounds like the problem described in Joel's piece.
Anytime that the process concerns dominate making product, supporting product, doing business, making money, you're in the soup. Any process, methodology, tool, language, whatever can be used to make product. And any process, etc. can become an idolatrous religion. Except Linux, of course.
Spolsky comes from a world where management realises that in order to get effeciency out of programmers, you need to treat them right and give them the tools that they need for the job. Now, this may be common or it may be rare, but it most certainly is the right way to run a programming shop. So when he says "this is why programmers get . . ." what he really means is "this is why _my_ programmers get and this is why _everyone's_ programmers should be getting . . ." :-)
Of course, he's also a but picky about what he'll accept as a proper "programmer"
sigs are hazardous to your health