Tonight, I was scanning across the home page of CNN Money and noticed there was an article entitled "The 50 Who Matter Now".  It is a ranking by Business 2.0 of people, products, trends, and ideas that are transforming the world of business.  (I copied the description right out of the article.)  It was no surprise to see some of the people included in the list: Steve Jobs, Tim O'Reilly, and the Google Trio.  However, I was rather surprised when I reached # 18: Agile Software Development - a new approach to web-based code.

The article described the reason agile matters was that it is reshaping the way coders and entrepreneurs create web-based services.  Their description was rather simplified, but it more or less effectively conveyed the point.  Anyway, it caught me off guard to discover the mention of agile software development in an article posted on CNN Money.  This got me to pondering whether agile is slowly gaining more ground as a mainstream development methodology. 

I have been closely following the agile community over the course of the last year.  Now, don't get me wrong.  I don't claim to be an agile expert.  Far from it.  To be honest, I have never even been involved on a true agile project.  However, I am a big fan of the principles and ideas that are driving the agile community.  As a developer, it just screams at me as though this is the way that software should be developed.  It has definitely caused me to develop a strong desire to begin applying those concepts, and I push for going that route quite often.  Unfortunately, I have been met with considerable opposition when attempting to encourage agile adoption.

Based on my conversations with others, this has been the same problem for a lot of other developers that are interested in making the move to agile development.  It would seem that most of the decision makers simply regard the agile process as hype, or they just don't see it as being beneficial.  As a result, I just don't personally know many developers on a true agile team.  I can actually count them on one hand.  I envy those fortunate few.  The rest of us feel like a group of heretics that must meet in secrecy at the risk of being executed. ;p

At any rate, it is encouraging to see agile development mentioned on something that is seemingly unrelated as CNN Money.  Hopefully, this can be perceived as a sign that agile is slowly winning over the majority of the development community.  However, only time will tell whether this is actually the case.

Thoughts?