Agile Business Change Blog Thoughts on Agile Strategic Business Change and Agile Delivery

One of Open Source's unique selling points (if I can use that phrase) is its responsiveness. We've had a really good example of this on our website recently, which demonstrates how issues with open source software can get fixed really quickly and efficiently.

We use the Drupal open source website content management system and wanted to add in the Amazon module that lets you link directly to Amazon contents (see our review of John Seddon's Systems Thinking in the Public Sector: The Failure of the Reform Regime.... and a Manifesto for a Better Way). We had an issue with how the links to Amazon were appearing in the "WHAT WE'RE SAYING" area of the website. The guy doing the development posted the problem on the Drupal website and resolved the cause of the problem with the module maintainer within a few days.

This experience contrasts with experiences I've had with companies supporting products, where it can be difficult to get fixes made between product releases, so any significant issue can mean waiting until the next product release.