When I was outlining this book, I was in two minds about whether to include a section on the history of the software industry and how Agile came to be. I figured most of you would be young enough not to know any different; you're probably doing something Agile or closely related to Agile already. However, I decided to include this chapter for two reasons:
- I still see echoes of the past affecting us today
- "Why" we do something is important to inform "what" we do and "how" we do it
When working as a software developer in the 1990s and 2000s, I worked in a range of different organization types, from software houses to software consultants, from large organizations such as corporate and central government to small three-person startups. In my experience across these different organization types, we used two noticeably different styles of software delivery, either as a product or a project.