During the 1990′s the global business community was investing enormous sums of money on the automation of resources leveraging advancements in modern technology and systems software (Boom and Bust in Information Technology Investment), as well as supporting the consolidation of organizations via mergers as a means of gaining competitive advantages. Failure was commonplace and despite the subsequent increase in investments, firing of personnel, and executive leadership support, the business community continued to fall short in their efforts to produce innovative advantages.  Big stakes for the international economy were at hand, so something had to change.

In February 2001 software developers met at resort in Snowbird, Utah to discuss lightweight development methodologies as a potential alternative for traditional heavyweight waterfall methods, which several were beginning to suspect as a contributing factor for why so many project teams were failing to provide the continuous innovation objectives their business management teams were demanding. The group gathering in the Rocky Mountains of Utah understood that early lightweight development methods were born out of challenging requirement projects; from the Easel Corporation project that helped spawn the SCRUM methodology in 1993 to the Chrysler Comprehensive Compensation System (C3) project that was credited with creating the Extreme Programming methodology in 1996. As the group of software developers discussed these case studies and analyzed other similar lightweight methodologies such as the Rational United Process (RUP), Crystal Clear, Adaptive Software Development, Feature Driven Development, and Dynamic Systems Development (DSDM), a common theme was emerging. Continue reading →