People > Process

We all know from the Agile Manifesto that it is more important to value Individuals and interactions over processes and tools. This was brought out again for me in this month's issue of CrossTalk, the Journal of Defense Software Engineering. This was CrossTalk's 20th anniversary and they decided to have some retrospective articles. The very first was an article by Watts Humphery, the father of CMMI. In the Process Revolution you get the story of the CMMI and a pitch for how great process is. The next article is Good Old Advice by Dr. Alistar Cockburn. This is a basic "it's the people stupid" article working the evolution of the agile manifesto all the way back to the waterfall method! (No kidding, there a waterfall in even in Scrum...) Paul Kimmerly's Heroes: Carrying a Double-Edged Sword gives another perspective on "it's the people stupid". In What Have 20 Years Accomplished and What Is Left to Accomplish in the Next 20 Years? Gerald M. Weinberg provides some interesting ruminations.