Ever notice the word "fix" has two connotations? One the one hand it means to "correct" while on the other it means to "secure in one place." One way to look at the goals of agile development methodologies is that they seek to correct things but not do lock them down or: "our goal is to fix problems without fixing them so that they won't need fixing later."
Anyway, I like this way of looking at Agile and I thought I'd share it.
So why blog this now? Well, I am getting ready to do a face lift on my site, and I stumbled across the css zen garden (pretty cool site BTW). I followed some links, and soon found myself traveling through parts of the web I haven't been to in a long time. Eventually, I found myself back at A List Apart -- somewhere I haven't been since my earliest days on the web.
What a pleasant surprise! I had somewhat forgotten about this, yet it had a big impact on my early thoughts about design. Like catching up with an old friend, I started reading through their recent articles. From one of them, I followed a link to an older article by John Allsop discussing how adaptability rather than control is what is important in web design. This message resonates strongly with the Agile approach and thus this blog entry was born.
I highly recommend John's article. Like all good writing, it is engaging whether you care about web design or not. Like all really good writing, its core message is applicable beyond its stated topic, and has much to say about software process's origins in manufacturing and construction.