Nothing like parody about the world's worst software development method to make you smile:

http://www.waterfall2006.com/

I love the opening sentence from Ron Jeffries' "keynote": "Agile Software Development is over."

The only sad part is that I'm CERTAIN there's about 50,000 PHBs out there that still think that the waterfall approach, like digital watches, it a pretty neat idea (let's ignore the bizarre moment when Microsoft apparently endorsed the waterfall approach as part of a TDD development method.  That was quickly rectified....I think the person responsible for that mistake can still be seen, gruesomely impaled on a high post beside the Microsoft flagpoles ).

Those of you that knew me before I joined Microsoft and transformed into "Game Development Man" knew that I was a huge advocate and practitioner of Agile Software Development.  I'm proud to call people like Ken Schwaber, Ward Cunningham, and Ron Jeffries my friends, and those with an even deeper history of me know of the work I did with a guy named Grady Booch.

So how does this all lead into game development?  Why, XNA of course!  You'll find me talking more and more about XNA in the upcoming months, expecially after we make some cool XNA announcements at this year's GDC.  One thing that seems confusing to folks is what XNA really is.  Many people think it's some kind of cool graphics modeling tool (it's not), or some amazing product where you lay your forehead on the keyboard and the game you're thinking about magically appears (give us another decade or so ).  The heart and soul of XNA is about the process of making games.  Not just writing them, but all the other REALLY annoying stuff.  Managing assets and work items, tracking progress (or "backlog"), plugging in 3rd party components, etc.  Handling all this is what XNA is about: "Better, Faster, Cheaper."

More to come in the weeks ahead