If you've got a bunch of good, productive developers, you've got to work really hard to get anything but good software out of them. They will probably self-organise into an effective team, whatever the methodology.
I'm sure there is an element of truth to this, but I doubt it's as decisive as you're suggesting in real life.
If you've got a good team of expert developers, people who are both individually skillful at producing useful code but also good team players and able to co-operate, I'd say you have a decent chance of them self-organising. I'd omit the "whatever the methodology", because these are exactly the kinds of teams who don't want or need some consultant's pet methodology limiting their options.
Of course, there is more to building useful real world software projects than just producing a good design and implementation. Even the most technically brilliant team also needs a clear goal to be effective in practice. Capturing the requirements and turning them into actionable specifications is a significant challenge in its own right, one which requires a very different skill set that even exceptional developers won't necessarily have.
I suggest that one of the big differences between a highly skilled and experienced team and a team with more modest capabilities is that the former will immediately recognise the need for clear specs and try to do something about the lack of them. The kinds of development processes and methodologies we're talking about today are designed in part to shield the latter from the same responsibility, but consequently they also rely on having very good people to do that work instead (and by corollary tend to fail hard if the communication with customers and resulting planning work aren't up to standard for whatever reason).
I'm sure there is an element of truth to this, but I doubt it's as decisive as you're suggesting in real life.
If you've got a good team of expert developers, people who are both individually skillful at producing useful code but also good team players and able to co-operate, I'd say you have a decent chance of them self-organising. I'd omit the "whatever the methodology", because these are exactly the kinds of teams who don't want or need some consultant's pet methodology limiting their options.
Of course, there is more to building useful real world software projects than just producing a good design and implementation. Even the most technically brilliant team also needs a clear goal to be effective in practice. Capturing the requirements and turning them into actionable specifications is a significant challenge in its own right, one which requires a very different skill set that even exceptional developers won't necessarily have.
I suggest that one of the big differences between a highly skilled and experienced team and a team with more modest capabilities is that the former will immediately recognise the need for clear specs and try to do something about the lack of them. The kinds of development processes and methodologies we're talking about today are designed in part to shield the latter from the same responsibility, but consequently they also rely on having very good people to do that work instead (and by corollary tend to fail hard if the communication with customers and resulting planning work aren't up to standard for whatever reason).