While the organisation of XP Day is often rather nebulous, it is the case that I have never been Conference Chair, but was Programme Chair in 2008 and 2009.

Kerry raises an interesting point: I think there is one of those no-conspiracy conspiracies at play here. As is so often the case, there turns out to be no reason for anyone invested in the status quo to break the cycle, and no way for anyone who would want to break the cycle to become invested in it. Indeed, if any supplier seeks to change the game they will be immediately expelled from it. No-one involved in this is (as far as I know) actively evil, rather its a perfectly reasonable system that just happens to be settled in a fabulously wasteful, but stable, orbit.

That system needs a _mighty_ perturbation to allow it to seek a less wasteful orbit, and that can only come from the politicos. We almost certainly get a new government in a few months, one of a party supposedly interested in smaller, more efficient government. We shall see what comes of that.

Keith

HERE IS MY CONSTRUCTIVE ADVICE ABOUT AGILE

TOM

Yes that’s a fair point and I have actually been to presentations organised by BT on Agile practices. However I do believe that companies like BT have a real responsibility (and are not doing enough) to stop the Government trying to undertake death march projects.

As good as people within BT’s intentions may be, I’m sure that as long as there is no drive from the Govt. to change the way it approaches managing software projects there will be little motivation for BT to do so either.

It’s certainly not in the interests of people like BT and Siemens to stop signing multi-million pound contracts and I’ve no doubt there are very few people working in an advisory manner to the government on I.T. strategies who are particularly aware or interested in the now well-established and highly successful Agile umbrella of ways to build effective software, both on time and on budget.

To be fair to BT (for whom I work, but don’t speak), we are making progress in moving towards a more agile approach to software development. If anything, there’s frustration that to compete for government work we are forced to use an inefficient waterfall approach rather than collaborating and iterating.