Barry Boehm and Richard Turner. "Observations on balancing discipline and agility." Agile Development Conference, 2003. ADC 2003. Proceedings of the. IEEE, 2003.
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Agile development methodologies promise higher customer satisfaction, lower defect rates, faster development times and a solution to rapidly changing requirements. Plan-driven approaches promise predictability, stability, and high assurance. However, both approaches have shortcomings that, if left unaddressed, can lead to project failure. The challenge is to balance the two approaches to take advantage of their strengths and compensate for their weaknesses.

— Barry Boehm

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Agile development methodologies promise higher customer satisfaction, lower defect rates, faster development times and a solution to rapidly changing requirements. Plan-driven approaches promise predictability, stability, and high assurance. However, both approaches have shortcomings that, if left unaddressed, can lead to project failure. The challenge is to balance the two approaches to take advantage of their strengths and compensate for their weaknesses." in the context of "Barry Boehm and Richard Turner. "Observations on balancing discipline and agility." Agile Development Conference, 2003. ADC 2003. Proceedings of the. IEEE, 2003." to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Source: Wikiquote: "Barry Boehm" (Quotes) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Barry Boehm

About Barry Boehm

Barry W. Boehm (May 16, 1935 – August 20, 2022) was an American software engineer, TRW Emeritus Professor of Software Engineering at the Computer Science Department of the University of Southern California, and known for his many contributions to software engineering.