Historically I guess I've been a BDUF (Big Design Up Front) guy but I'm trying hard to be more agile and embrace the methodology that gets so many in the blogspace fired up.

I have to say though, I'm shocked at the attitude of most Agilers when they're evangelising Agile over BDUF. I get a real sense of petulance and I'm stunned by the number of articles that compare one analogy with another. Some of the people I most admire get dragged into this.

So far my most successful projects would probably fall into the BDUF category (though all my projects have embraced parts of the Agile ideal). I accept that this might be because I'm not doing Agile properly but these projects were great successes nonetheless. And that's what matters.

I don't think I'll ever be purely agile because I agree with Joel Spolsky when he says you need to "design the program". The problem lies in the fact that most developers are great at writing software, but not very good at designing software.

Maybe a Wooden Garden Shed is a better analogy than a bridge? I regularly see developers who don't plan their work deliver software that looks like they just walked out into the back garden with some wood and some nails and started banging away...

Damn, I just slipped and started comparing analogies didn't I? Oh well, If you can't beat 'em.