Projects vs Business

I read something via reddit recently that hit a nerve:

In this article: Meeting the founders of reddit

he says that: “Reddit, like many other initiatives is more a “project” than a “company/business”

Like everyone, I get inspired by Paul Graham’s writings, and like the idea of making money doing something cool, but my brain seems to be much better at generating ideas for fun projects/cool hacks, as opposed to businesses. I wonder if it’s possible or worth it to make that change. Sometimes trying to “be what you aren’t” is unpleasant and unsuccessful. On the other hand, perhaps it’s more of an acquired skill that doesn’t really conflict with the ‘hacker’ mentality…

Agile methods for introducing Agile Development?

Something else I found on reddit:

An Agile Approach to a Legacy System (pdf)

seems interesting because it deals with crappy, real world code, rather than some ideal workplace that exists only in fantasyland. I wish that they’d explained a bit more, at the technical level, of how they managed to integrate their new system with the old one, as that is often a difficult task when the code always has to be up and running, and the old system is in production.

I have a Big Ball of Mud to deal with myself, and a development process that is not agile, nor much of anything else really. It’s the kind of situation that is only going to change ‘in small iterations’, rather than trying (and quite possibly failing) to impose a new way of doing things in one fell swoop. So perhaps what I need is an agile methodology for introduction agile development in small iterations?