I was just reminded about my first experience on just how agile (lower case ‘a’, not the Agile methodology) software development can be.

It was in the late 80s when I was Lead Developer at Practical Software and we had a dozen representatives come in from MindScape to take some product training. We had a big monitor up front of the room and I think Chip ran the sessions while David Gale (it was his company) and I sat at the back of the room watching.

Early on there was a moment  of visible confusion amongst the trainees at some screen; they weren’t sure what to do, it wasn’t clear. They moved past that point and on with the training but David and I conferred and I had a suggestion for a redesign which he approved and I implemented so while they were on their lunch break I updated all their computers.

When they came back they had a better program waiting for them.

Today with the internet and even just good old networks the updates can be instantaneous but this example shows how, even in the good-old-days software development was fast.