Claude Montpetit -- Montpetit.net -- en

Excerpt from Martin Fowler' bliki:

An essential point about agile methods, and a clear distinction between them and the plan-driven methods, is that agilist firmly believe that "individuals and interactions" matter more "processes and tools." This PeopleOriented assumption means that agilists will always expect a high-ability cohesive team to do better than a team of lower ability, whichever one follows more agile approaches. The assumption does mean that organizations should put their primary emphasis on getting and growing high-ability people for their teams. This does not mean that a low-ability team will do worse with agile than plan-driven methods.

Much of agile methods requires judicious skill. Self adaptation is required to change the process, many agile techniques focus on honing skill levels. I think this must mean that an effective agile team need to have some people who are of higher-ability. But this is true of plan-driven methods too. After all plan-driven methods assume that higher-ability people will draw up the plans. Both approaches require some high-ability people, although the way those leaders work with the team is different. The open question is whether you get more leverage of the high-ability people from plans or from collaboration.

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