Agility Vs. Hacking

The whole concept of agile programming, which I'm playing off of for
the field of marketing, is being catapulted to the front of our
awareness, primarilly by the Ruby on Rails agile programming
framework. I'm doing this post to put the term agile in perspective.

Agile implies the fact that you don't know everyhing you need to know
at the outset of a project. Often, the first step of a project is thw
creation od a requirements document. But with easier programming
platforms, and the removal of the danger of committing to code too
soon, some magical effects happen.

First, the ACTUAL problem domain owner can do the work, eliminating
all the inefficiency of communicating to a non-invested programmer.
All the important nuanced details that make all the difference, but
which are usually lost in communication are not lost. The vision can
be more directly realized.

Second, fear disolves away. Agile frameworks create a ready, fire, aim
approach that we've been trained to despise, because of the inherent
risk of wasting time, money, and other resources. But when you're told
your mistakes won't be held against you, but are rather encouraged as
part of a "zero'ing in" process, then you can be playful and
experimental, right in the implementation stage.

In the past, such a shooting from the hip approach would be frowned
upon as hacking. But today, hackers have become so much more
efficient, and able to turn their rapid productivity skills into
personal fortunes in the Web 2.0 world, that everyone else now wants a
piece of that action. Ruby on Rails walked into a perfect storm.

Anyway, now that you don't need a computer science degree to be an
effective programmer, and Marketing people are the biggest customers
for such apps, the time has come for Agile Marketing.

Sent from my iPhone