Scott Berkun: "Asshole Driven Development"

For a humorous but insightful take on the latest real world software development methodologies (never mind theory!), see Scott Berkun's definitions of Asshole Driven Development, or ADD, Cognitive Dissonance Development, or CDD, Cover Your Ass Engineering, or CYAE, Development by Denial, or DBD, and Get Me Promoted Methodology, or GMPM. As Scott notes, there are about forty more in the comments.

For flavor, let me just reproduce one of Scott's definitions, for Cognitive Dissonance Development. This will be familiar to any company fighting to introduce new Web 2.0 methodologies into a traditional IT shop:

CDD: In any organization where there are two or more divergent beliefs on how software should be made. The tension between those beliefs, as it’s fought out in various meetings and individual decisions by players on both sides, defines the project more than any individual belief itself.

This post is a great read for anyone interested in the real business of software.

(Note: Scott is the author of two books published by O'Reilly, The Art of Project Management and Myths of Innovation.)