Successful projects using agile methods? [closed]

Question

I have been interested in agile methods of late and have found a lot of prescriptions and minute descriptions of a lot of practices. Still, I remember my best projects as run-to-completion spikes followed by some debugging and minimal testing before going live.

I have been asking myself, did Flickr use agile methods? Does Facebook practice TDD? Was Gmail made in 25 minute spans followed by 5 minutes of daydream?

In other words, before I listen further to all the preaching and jump into the manuals, what evidence do I get that this is the way to be successful in a successful project in a successful company?

Of course, I am asking this because I want to read the answers, not because I want to dismiss an argument.

Answer 1

A related question is, how many non-Agile (Waterfall, "Big Design Up Front", etc) projects are successful? In my experience, not many. In fact, I just rolled off a two-phase project in which the first phase was traditional Waterfall and failed pretty significantly, but the second phase was iterative in nature and yielded substantially better results (on time, far fewer defects, end result was closer to client's actual needs than the original spec).

I've been doing Agile development for a few years now and, overall, have found it to be superior to the alternative. A few things I've noticed:

1. Agile != "no process". Agile is about having only as much process as you need and continually refining that process.

2. Agile requires discipline. You not only have to have a process, you have to follow it.

3. Agile won't turn a failing project into a success. It can help you identify that the project is failing sooner rather than later, and help you figure out why it's failing. It's about shortening the feedback loop so that you have a chance to get back on course before it's too late.

Microsoft Research recently posted an article in which they empirically evaluate some Agile methods. It's well worth a read and might provide some of the information you're looking for.