Is Ken Schwaber libeling me here in the Scrum Yahoo group? You decide!

MSF for Agile Software Development was mostly authored by Randy Miller but I contributed. People like Ward Cunningham and Jim Newkirk reviewed it. Is Ken libeling us all?

I'd like to pick Ken's post apart line by line...

It defines roles within the development team, so it isn't cross-functional.

This isn't true. MSF has the Team Model which is completely cross-functional. In fact, the MSF Team Model includes the full lifecycle including deployment, support and operations and as such is more comprehensive than any agile method I've seen.

It tells the team what to do, so it misses self-management.

On this point, Ken is correct. MSF for Agile Software Development was developed as an "agile for the rest of us." It was intended for adoption in mid-market IT departments that were previously unwilling to adopt agile methods. It was designed for organizations where there isn't sufficient trust to have extreme agile methods or where there isn't a critical mass of top developers who will maintain the self-discipline that extreme agile methods require. The replacement for complete trust and self-discipline is prescription.

In addition, MSF for Agile Software Development supports the most advanced software development environment ever offered to the community. The process is designed to educate the community on the features in the product and teach them how to use those features. To do this, it is necessary to describe processes and procedures of use. It is necessary to provide prescriptions of use.

It defines what steps to take, so it isn't empirical.

Ken clearly uses a different version of the English dictionary from me. I don't understand what prescription has to do with empirical observation. If he is implying that a defined process can't work for an empirical problem then this is just plane wrong. It is perfectly reasonable to define a system that adapts for empirical observation. Anyone who ever studied the design of central heating controllers or operational amplifiers knows this.

It has increments that aren't potentially shippable, so it isn't lean.

This is simply not true. It also shows a lack of understanding of batching processes in lean manufacturing. MSF encourages shippable code and shippable releases - at least with a daily build and with small iteration sizes of 2 to 6 weeks. However, MSF also recognizes that enterprise scale software development necessitates integration layers and batches of work (iterations) that might need to be merged with others before they are releasable. This is the working reality for many of us solving the enterprise scale agility problems every day.

Lots of artifacts and no emerging list of requirements and architecture, so it is wasteful and not lean/agile.

Again, this simply isn't true. There are actually very few artifacts in MSF for Agile Software Development and those that do exist are clearly not waste. Is a Persona definition waste? Is a usage Scenario, for that persona, waste? Is a deployment architecture diagram waste? Is an application system diagram, waste? Actually, I'd claim that the Team Architect features that allow the modeling of mock deployments represent poka-yoke in Lean terms. I personally feel that Ken's comments show that he is out of touch with modern approaches to software architecture and system development tools.

MSF Agile was developed by several people that have aren't very practiced in Agile working with EDS and Accenture, neither of which have any experience in Agile. They appear to have read the manifesto and seen how they could shoehorn their old waterfall processes into it so they could call it Agile. It is a disgrace to those who were engaged in this activity, and to our profession.

There really isn't much to say about this paragraph. I think you, as readers of this website, are better placed to decide. You've read my work over the years. You've seen my contributions to the literature. You've read my published results on productivity, quality and team development. You choose - am I a disgrace? and do I insult our profession? Whom does this post by Ken reflect most poorly on? You decide!  Technorati tag: Agile, David+Anderson, Ken+Schwaber, MSF, Microsoft, Visual+Studio, Team+System, Randy+Miller, Ward+Cunningham, Jim+Newkirk