Individuals Over People

Flaw of #Agile? - Agile practices also put a ceiling on how effective a team can be.

I'm still a believer in Agile. It's the best way I know how to take an average performing team and put them on a path to becoming a well performing team. However, I think the Agile practices also put a ceiling on how effective a team can be. Perhaps my favorite anecdote: Ola Bini believes he is 10x faster when using Emacs as compared to IntelliJ - when writing Java! 10x is huge, so what does he use when he's pairing: IntelliJ. If there's knowledge transfer occurring then perhaps the 10x reduction in delivery speed is a good decision; however, if he's pairing with someone of a similar skill level who isn't statistically likely to maintain the code in the future it's a terrible choice. Ola is programming at 1/10 of his possible efficiency for no reason other than it's the Agile way.

Full article: http://blog.jayfields.com/2011/07/individuals-over-people...