Modern software is a very unique art form that is similar to creative writing, yet different in scale, volume, and the number of people that must work together to produce it. Imagine a fiction 100 times larger than the encyclopedia (yes, a fiction) and written by 500 authors. Not only the story needs to be compelling and the style consistent, there is also essentially zero tolerance on errors in spelling, punctuation, gramma, or word usage.
So called software methodology exist mostly to deal with “programming in the large” — that a large number of people must collaborate to do software. If we only employ small teams, then the methodology is no longer an interesting concept.
Few software company can afford the pace of George R.R. Martin.
With the goal of selling for money, instead of a single fiction that large, what if we change to 500 short-stories that are related in plots. Each independent author will announce his/her plot idea and characters before he/she start and proceed to write the story without more interaction to others. The new story will become part of the big story to make it richer and deeper. It can also become the basis for more short stories to follow.
Oh, at anytime, we can choose to re-write or even remove one or more of the short-stories. Either the original authors were not creative enough, or the sub-plots do not fit the whole anymore.
I am now part of this “methodology experiment” by being in charge of several short-stories whose plots are tighter related. My authors are bright and the plot ideas are good. Let’s see if we can publish faster with this unique way of developing software.