Analysing methodologies
15th November 2003
Joel Spolsky on analysing development methodologies:
But we don’t have the data. We don’t have any data. You can give us anecdotes left and right about how methodology X worked or didn’t work, but you can’t prove that when it worked it wasn’t just because of one really, really good programmer on the team, and you can’t prove that when it failed is wasn’t just because the company was in the process of going bankrupt and everybody was too demoralized to do anything at all, Aeron chairs notwithstanding.
More recent articles
- The Axios supply chain attack used individually targeted social engineering - 3rd April 2026
- Highlights from my conversation about agentic engineering on Lenny's Podcast - 2nd April 2026
- Mr. Chatterbox is a (weak) Victorian-era ethically trained model you can run on your own computer - 30th March 2026