>Prince2 defines explicitly the roles and responsibilities through the executive >sponsor, senior user(s) and supplier(s), a project manager at a minimum.

yes agile requests for a executive sponsor.
Yet when we don’t have it, we think we can work around it.
Lot’s of PO & SM have a difficulty to access the right level of management for key decisions.
We need it because like you said in agile we can stop the work every iteration.
To do this (and we should it more often) we need access to people who can do that.

Usually PO & SM have access to people who want to keep working.
It might be good for them/their department, but is it best for the whole company? that is not up to them to decide.

I agree that DSDM offers some value and I can imagine it being a whole new world for traditional PM. For people who are in an organization that does not want to leave the traditional ways just yet it might even be a very viable solution. I think there are definitely cases where DSDM would be a proper method to follow.

That being said, there are several areas where I disagree with it, or at least find it lacks the potential of bringing the bigger value of other Agile methods.
One of those areas is in the principle of “inspect and adapt” towards the process. There is no (formal) occasion to challenge (and subsequently adjust) the way of working during the project. One of the big selling points DSDM uses is that it is a well documented method however I find that a very limiting mindset. I am much more inclined to stick to a set of minimal rules (such as the 16p. scrum guide by Schwaber on scrum.org) and add a set of known good/best practices that are open for discussion during the project.
Another area where I find DSDM falls short is that it still compartmentalizes the team by defining several roles. Agile promotes a culture of equals in the team. This cultural shift is very important to me as it is at heart of some of the big benefits Agile brings to an organisation (closer collaboration and shared commitment to name just 2). The team should be self organizing in the sense that it contains all skills needed to meet the goals of the iteration but it shouldn’t be a matter of filling the right roles, which is the message that DSDM (perhaps unwillingly) sends across.
The last point that annoys me is the promotion of the MoSCoW technique. A prioritized set should be a set where all elements in it have a unique priority so there is never any confusion. If there is absolutely no difference in terms of value/priority between 2 requirements on a list than it shouldn’t matter which one the team takes up first (hence making an ordered list is easy). As is often the case though, there actually is an order of priority in a given category, which is not visualized by MoSCoW as all items in a category are equal, in theory.

I should be thanking you and the people contributing questions, I really enjoy it!

On the reporting aspect. I agree that there is indeed an element of reporting in it, but I think it is reporting in the literal sense (i.e. “to give an account or representation of in words”). My experience has been that many people indeed do think about detailed boring status reports when they hear the term. I just wanted to make sure that there was no confusion.
An earlier draft actually said “all you do is report to the team on where you are”, but I ultimately replaced that by “share where you are” for the sake of clarity.

And yes, stand-ups should be fun and quick!

Thanks for writing about Retroflection.
You made me realize we are already going for 2 years, wow.
Luckily for me, it’s not just me anymore. We have a lot of people inventing questions.
I have no idea what Rob’s intention was with this question, I selected the question exactly for the answer you gave.
As I walk around in lots of companies I see exactly this happening.
People reporting to a scrummaster. When I am that scrum master and I notice this behavior, I start to look outside the window. Or I set myself outside the circle.

Yes a daily standup is for the team and not for the SM.

Is it reporting, I find a little harder to answer.
In a way it is a report to your teammembers on the three questions.
And I agree with you that when I hear reporting, I think about boring status reports.

Daily standups supposed to be fun, and quick.

If I would have started with hotmail, that e-mail adres would be important to me. So I would not change it.
Of course, because of that, it was also important to have my own domain.
In that sense google has doen a great job by offering me to use gmail with my personal account. Best of both words…

y

It is true that open source software relies heavily on the userbase, whereas commercial packages rely on the company that built them. But I can’t say the latter gives a better user experience or support.

Open source software will continue to grow, because of the simple fact that succesfull projects become even more succesfull when lots of people get their hands on it and start using it in ways it was not intended to, requesting & adding features, pushing the envelope. And the beauty of it is that anybody with enough knowledge can make those “hacks” and don’t have to wait for the next upgrade they can buy.. (numerous examples, see web-cms’es e.g.)

I agree though that there are “hidden costs”.. open-source does not mean “free” and is certainly not always the best option !