Other Considerations

Non-project software development work

Not all software development work occurs in projects, even considering the many definitions described at the beginning of the chapter. Ad hoc, single-person software work is common in handling support tickets, production issues, patches, and so on.

This kind of work certainly qualifies as software development work, and it is also amenable to Agile practices. It can be made more efficient, higher quality, and more methodical through adoption of Agile practices such as Lean and Kanban. However, in my experience, organizations tend to struggle with this kind of work much less than they struggle with project-size software development work, so this course focuses on projects rather than ad hoc work streams.