Agile development should come with a warning: Once you’re exposed to it you might not be able to tolerate other practices.

This is what happened with me.

I became convinced that the agile approach is the way to go when it comes to web development when I applied parts of it to personal projects. So I couldn’t understand how the company I work in could see things differently.

They’ve already spent over 6 months on documentation and requirements gathering and they are clearly going on an insanely stupid path.

I’m planning on leaving them to start my own company simply because I can’t stand the stupidity people approach web development with. The worst thing I heard in one of the useless and frustrating meetings I attended was: “Who cares about the users, as long as we get approval from the project committee.”

One of my clients, sidereel.com started with an XP-ish process from the first week. They had an alpha for investors in 2 months, a private beta in 3, and a public beta in 4 months. Now they’re happily funded, up to a dozen people, and just shy of Alexa 1000 site. Weekly iterations meant they always had new progress to show potential investors. And being able to change direction easily meant they could try a lot of things out and invest heavily in areas the users liked.

Speaking of which, I and a colleague are interested in trying out some variations of the Planning Game with a couple of user-focused startups. If any VH readers want to be guinea pigs, we’re looking for Bay Area teams that are early in the process, actively struggling to put together a product plan, and have both business and technical people involved full time. If there’s anybody here that meets those criteria, just drop me a line. My email address is my first name at my domain name.