Andrew MacNeill - AKSEL Solutions

I hesitate to say Agile in a blog as, these days, it sounds like I'm mentioning C or Assembly in a programming discussion. That's not to say it's old but more that it has been commented on so many times, it's not worth mentioning. But too often, Agile is described as an "all or nothing" choice. It's not and my experience has bore this out. Every organization is different. While businesses may be one type of organization, government is another kind. Small businesses are different than large businesses. Small businesses, for example, will gladly take a chance on open-source software and new tools. Their IT infrastructure can be easily modified to handle it. Larger corporations and governments balk at switching approaches, regardless of benefits. It may be tolerated in smaller groups, but not as a corporate standard. So when "we're going agile" were the first words mentioned at a project kick-off meeting a few years ago, I was optimistic but...

UPDATE: FieldBook is shutting down as of June 15th, 2018. Their co-founder, Jason Crawford , has written a great article on medium describing the reasons why.  It's always tough when businesses shut down but it is valuable to learn why. It looks like finding and engaging resources is always a challenge. Business owners and workers all over the world build applications using spreadsheets. When funds are low or time doesn't permit, a spreadsheet can be the starting point for a new business application. It's fast and easy. Even in larger corporations, workers take to Excel to make up for what their IT departments couldn't or wouldn't give them. Microsoft has done well with this - Excel has grown from a basic spreadsheet to a full application development system. Microsoft may offer Access or SQL Server Express but to the chagrin of many developers (and sales folk), Excel can be used to create not just workbooks with protected cells, but fully form-based applications...