Wild West to Agile: Adventures in Software Development Evolution and Revolution

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Wild West

(1966–1979)

“A SMALL STEP for man, one giant leap for mankind,” said Neil Armstrong, venturing onto the lunar landscape for the first time. Upon college graduation in 1966, I had several electrical engineering job offers—Westinghouse in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; IBM in Poughkeepsie, New York; and Pan American World Airways Aerospace in Coco Beach, Florida, working on the Apollo moon landing program. My selection process was not difficult. Pan Am had a contract with the Air Force to manage the missile flight operations at Cape Canaveral (not at the Kennedy Space Center, a National Aeronautics and Space Administration [NASA] facility), ...