The bottom of the waterfall or going over the top

Given how rarely I post anything in the Tech Writing category, it's mindboggling that I've got two on the same day . . .

John Hedtke (who also blogs — occasionally — at Don't Ask Me; I'm Making This Up As I Go Along) had this to say about a few of the non-traditional software development models:

XP and Agile are excuses for bad behavior. "We're manly men who code brilliantly; we don't need documentation because our code is perfect and if the users don't understand our godlike design, that's their problem." XP and Agile will get code out the door and it may even be good code (occasionally), but it ignores the idea that 90% of programming is maintenance . . . and without internal documentation or process, you have no history.

I've seen XP happening in a number of companies that are now dead. Think of it as evolution in action.

This is not to say that there aren't good aspects to the current flavour-of-the-month software development models, but this particular interpretation of XP/Agile carries with it some built-in flaws, and the poor folks in the QA and Documentation groups are usually the first to get hit with them.