A while back I stumbled upon this article by the team at radiiate.co.za. It speaks about the benefits and potential pitfalls of using agile development methods in general.

I was preoccupied with a lot of things at the time so the message did not really sink through that a lot of time and effort could be swallowed up by this approach, and that it is probably best left to internal or personal projects only.

The article mentions also Agile can be employed on client work if there is a clear understanding of the time and costs involved in journeying from point A to a hazy point B.

I could not agree more, especially after spending the past week on designing this blog (WordPress) and getting new ideas as I went along. I shuddered at the thought of having a client behave the way I did and yet being on a fixed budget.

Someone would have definitely got burned and I wonder, since Agile is the buzzword right now (especially in the Rails community),  how this wildcard of a project scope is accounted for.

I don’t know too many clients who would be willing to hand you a blank development cheque, not least in these times of economic turmoil. What do you think?