This morning I went to a presentation on MSF Agile for Visual Studio Team System (VSTS).
I have never written a blog on Agile before, because although I have been using the process in anger for six months now, I do not consider myself an expert in the subject.
But today has forced me to blog on the subject, because what I saw so clearly misses the point of Agile. I have two the reasons why Microsoft has done this: 1) It wants to use the term agile because it sounds good, or 2) It thinks Agile means Flexible. Maybe its both.
One of the key things I like about Agile is that it is light weight; you only have as much formal process as you really need, because heavy processes cause friction in the development cycle. If you use a more formal process, it must be easy to use and provide significant value add - otherwise it gets in the way of solving the problem. A great example of this is the new class designer is Visual Studio 2005. We use it regularly on the projector to conduct group design sessions. It has more friction and is more formal than a white board, but the pay off is a better automatically written interfaces. This saves us hours of dull coding.
So now to MSF Agile in VSTS, which by all accounts appears to have formalised the whole process. Oh, and MS Project makes its way into the process. There was talk of use cases as well. In short, it looked like RUP. And then so did old MSF. What they have done is provide a heavily customisable tool that lets you taylor the process. This seems to be what they mean by Agile.
Now, I'm not adverse to RUP, but I feel annoyed that Microsoft have hijaked the Agile term, and turned into formal. There is nothing Agile about MSF. All it is is a flexible tool for managing a formal process. Rant over.