Sadly, most people have reduced agile to the “value responding to change over following a plan” aspect because that is closest in meaning to the English word ‘agile’. In it’s most degenerate form it simply becomes, “don’t plan (just buy our stuff)”. This is why Scrum and XP don’t suffer the same fate as much, they don’t have a dictionary definition to fall back on.

Now, logically speaking, Agile isn’t dead, of course. More broadly we can say that people are poorly applying the label.

What is SOA really anyway? It’s really a form of code reuse which differs from library oriented code reuse in that you connect to a running instance of the reused code over the network, thus creating unnecessary live interdependencies between systems. Or is it that systems should have well defined, technology stack independent, APIs to share data using verbose formats?

Michel: Bingo! SOA takes over *everything*, even where it’s not needed. Even the industrial automation industry is afflicted with the SOA disease, but some friends of mine and I are fighting back. See http://rest-pca.org

Franco: You’re absolutely on the mark. The old Toyota Production System that sparked off ‘lean’ (and indirectly ‘agile’) actively discourages complex, expensive, technological solutions in favour of stuff that just works – preferring systems that give feedback to a process without imposing too much of an administrative overhead. Who said we need all these tricky tools to manage our development processes? I’m giving up on Mingle, Jira, etc and just going back to the old card system – knowing I can walk into the development room and see exactly where the team is up to. See http://rubyredbricks.com/2009/6/26/requirements-are-transient-artifacts

Sorry for putting the links in here Scott, but I think you’ve started something and the momentum needs to keep on building.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I suggest that a revolution is underway. It may not be televised, but it will be blogged.

An Agile approach is what will save SOA implementations from doom. Starting with a limited set of requirements to quickly create the services-chain that will allow you to deploy an application that you can give users, gather feedback and then fine-tune, extends, create another app, and so on.

Although I also feel that the Agile word is being killed by misuse, Agile per se is not dead and will not be anytime soon. How to talk about SOA and Agile? I’d say that “SOA is dead – Agile to the rescue” could be a good title

Michel

I considered using that very title for the piece but went for the more fatalistic short-hand version after I had finished writing it.

Agile is dead. Long live Agile!

What this really means is that the concept that you’ve known for years is great has finally received the recognition it deserves. But along with that upside comes the downside: unwanted imitation, where copycats can not only dilute the meaning of a terrific concept, but could also sully its good name forever. Basically, you have no choice but to ride it out for a while until the imitators find a new buzzword to start leeching the life force out of. That’s when the “XYZ” that you love so much becomes “XYZ Classic” or “The Real XYZ.” And even if its good name is irreparably damaged, as Jin Chun mentions above, the same practices can be implemented without ever referring to their names at all.

What happens with really strong concepts, though, is that they weather the storm and, if need be, reinvent themselves. The word “Agile” might’ve taken a pretty decent hit in your vendor’s presentation, but that really just means that Agile is very much alive and and will come out stronger for it no matter what it’s called.

Someday, when we get beyond all of this, we might actually be able to replace our COBOL mainframes with something else that is actually better. Someday.

*Sigh*

But yes.. the SOA vendor seems to have no shame.