The Right Methodology

Is Lean better than Agile? Scrum vs XP? Of course it all depends, and all methodologies can only be to some degree beneficial for current situation. And in the future new methodologies will appear, which will better address problems of the day. There can be no single “body of knowledge” which is relevant forever.

“But what about math”, you may ask. It seems to have stable body of knowledge (say, axiomatic set theory). Well yes, but we are solving problems on a different level today, taking as a foundation all that has been proven before. It’s not that the foundation is irrelevant, it’s that our focus is elsewhere, as we believe the foundation is stable :).

Also, there is no “single true” foundation. We may take another set of axioms and start building all over from there. It just depends on a problem at hand which theory is better.

That said, i feel Lean and Agile are both very beneficial methodologies for the environment I’m working in, ant it’s really pity how badly they can be misinterpreted. (“You’re not following the plan! Can’t you be a little more agile?”, “Agile is total and thorough crap. Lean, that’s out thing!”)

why this blog?

It so often happens to me that i say something and noone seems to understand :). Well, this applies to my field of expertise - software engineering. Like, i say "OK, this is possible, but..." - and nobody seems to care that there is "but" and something after it. Of course, this is just standard human reaction, to dismiss what you cannot comprehend, but still i feel very often it would have been better if those words were heard, also considering that i usually talk only when i think i have something important to say(things like "oh, you must have been to a barber, what a nice haircut!" are not considered important by me despite of possibly having emotional impact which could very well cause some important things to happen - bun anyway, who is to measure that?). So, for not to feel uneasy for letting my words in vain, i will write something here.
Also, i read quite a bit science fiction, fantasy books, mostly in my native language - lithuanian, and sometimes in russian. And of course i read books in programming - ranging from algorithms/complexity to software projects management. So i will try to post impressions on my readings here as well.