63 Quotes by Jim Highsmith

Process is not a substitute for skill.

Large portions of the productivity gains from agile methods come not from doing things better, but from not doing them at all.

If you have unskilled people who work poorly together, no amount of process will save your projects.

When project leaders focus on delivery, they add value to projects. When they focus on planning and control, they tend to add overhead.

Simple rules guide innovative, intelligent responses. Comprehensive rules guide rote, routine responses.

Iterative development, when accompanied with reasonable end-of-iteration reviews – product, technical, process, team – is also self-correcting.

Executives, project leaders, and development teams must embrace a different view of the new product development world, one that not only recognizes change in the business world, but also understands the power of driving down iteration costs to enable experimentation and emergent processes. Understanding these differences and how they affect product development is key to understanding APM.

Agility is the ability to balance flexibility and stability.

The greatest risk we face in software development is that of overestimating our own knowledge.