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Re: Are you Agile?
I'm not involved in any software development, but some of that rings true for the things I am involved in. I work for a housing group and (for fairly obvious reasons) a GIS / mapping system would be useful. So for something like four of the last five years we've considered getting something in, but it has to be some huge formal project involving dozens of (very busy) people who work in different offices all having to give their input, a series of rigid bureaucratic steps and budgets being agreed - none of which rarely work out.
If we do eventually do obtain a GIS system it'll inevitably be horribly poor value for money, because we'll have a £100k budget or something, get some consultants in, and inevitably all the budget will be spent, the product will be released internally, a thousand complaints/suggestions/ammendments will emerge but the budget will be all gone so nothing will ever change.
Instead, the much cheaper alternative of just putting a server aside and trying some basic OSS development incrementally isn't even considered. Perversely it's seen as too risky, or perhaps something which smells of anarchism.
Fortunately I do my own thing, but imagine if I wasn't around? We'd be doomed.
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