7 minutes, 26 seconds, and the Fundamental Theorem of Agile Software Development

Fred Brooks' essay "No Silver Bullet" taught us that no single technique can bring us an order-of-magnitude improvement within a single decade. In spite of this, from his ideas of essential and accidental complication, we can conclude something stunning about the nature of agile software development.

This talk was recorded at Øredev conference 2013, and yes, I named this talk "7 minutes, 26 seconds" before I went on stage. :)

Many thanks to Øredev for recording this talk.

[CryptoArch]

You know that makes this talk so good? The meta-language! It's great and you see those things happening and the one selling the idea being the first one to prove it works!
I'm talking about the fact the talk is named "7 minutes, 26 seconds", it's the first thing you said and that is the biggest proof that it's possible to make ZERO Accidental Complications! You estimated the talk as 7:26, that's it, no one will argue if you could have done it in less time, because you delivered exactly what you estimated.
It's not an easy thing to do, not in a talk nor on a company project, but the message is "it's possible!"

[andrewcousineau]

What a mic drop at the end with that timing!

[jflaga]

"If you want to estimate little things, you have to refactor ..." - J. B. Rainsberger
"... Scrum cannot work without XP" - J. B. Rainsberger

Wow! Very interesting. Thank you so much for this. Even though I do not yet have that much knowledge about Scrum and XP, these statement will be on my mind forever, I believe, while learning more on software development.

[julienl.]

2:40 "of course he was gonna say that !!!"... epic :-)

[gantrieltharxius]

You’re awesome btw, really enjoyed this presentation.

[SergeySamokhov]

Oy vey, a developer bitten by a preacher!
Cannot disagree with the sermon though.