Fri, 11 Jul 2014 09:51:52
“I wanted to understand the reason why my customers’ methodologies didn’t work for my company, so I brought several systems development methodologies to process theory experts at the DuPont Experimental Station in 1995. These experts, led by Babatunde “Tunde” Ogannaike, are the most highly respected theorists in industrial process control. They know process control inside out. Some of them even taught the subject at major universities. They had all been brought in by DuPont to automate the entire product flow, from forecasts and orders to product delivery.
“They inspected the systems development processes that I brought them. I have rarely provided a group with so much laughter. They were amazed and appalled that my industry, systems development, was trying to do its work using a completely inappropriate process control model. They said systems development has so much complexity and unpredictability that it had to be managed by a process control model they referred to as “empirical”. They said this was nothing new, and all complex processes that weren’t completely understood required the empirical model.” - Ken Schwaber, Agile Software Development with Scrum