The Agile Enterprise

Most of Agile adoption surveys indicate Scrum as the most used Agile framework. Personally I believe that XP was more robust but perhaps it came before the time was right but I agree that Scrum, with his simplicity is a good framework and can be integrated easy and efficient with PMBoK combining agility with governance.

The guide has only 19 pages, including the cover, content and acknowledgements. It clearly defines 3 roles only: Developer, Product Owner and Scrum Master. It also defines the framework "founded on empirical process control theory, or empiricism. Empiricism asserts that knowledge comes from experience and making decisions based on what is known". 

What is known evolves with technology, the product development life cycle is dependent on technology. What worked in client server doesn't work anymore for  cloud and mobile applications.

I use Scrum for over 15 years, championed and implemented the framework in the "perfect storm": small and medium software development companies and I love it. I loved the fact that we learned doing it and we had the freedom to do whatever worked for us.

I see a lot of "Agile" certifications for roles that have nothing to do with Scrum. What is the value of a certification for an empirical framework? What does it certify? Is a 3 days course enough to learn Scrum? It took us, in a software development company, more than one year to understand it and become proficient. While I see value in training after few months of experimenting with Scrum, I believe that self study and knowledge sharing between the members of the Scrum Team is more benefic.

I don't believe that the "software Agile" was very successful because it was, from the beginning, "better" but because it came at the right time and because the environmentof the rapid penetration of devices using software in our lives.

Many Agile practices, like iterative and incremental and test driven development, were used for decades when the Manifesto was published. Some Agile frameworks XP, DSDM and even Scrum) were already used for years.

The big enablers were the Personal Computer, the cloud, mobile devices and last but not least the Object Oriented programming. Not only that software development become a widely spread occupation and done more and more outside the traditional "Computer Office" but with Pascal  and later c the way of thinking was different. In 80s computer time and technical performances (processing power, memory, storage) were the significant impediments. I remember the PDP 11 with 16 terminals and th3 256 MB hard drive. Then we had the first PC in mid 80s and what took one day to run on PDP took less than 2 hrs on the PC, we didn't need punch cards but we had to partition the 20 MB hard drive because it was too big.

Software is no longer bough as a product like in 2001, nowadays we consume software services (Facebook, tweeter, Uber, Amazon, eBay) or we rent it. However Agile values and principles transcended software development and practices developed in manufacturing are adapted to any projects with Agile becoming an option to be considered for any project,

I see many Agile implementations reinventing the wheel and making the same mistakes that my generation made. I believe that the best support for Agile should come from practitioners sharing their failures rather than spin doctors presenting Agile as a silver bullet. 

I believe that the beauty of Agile is the journey towards unknown, in the process uncovering better ways of developing products by doing it and helping others do it. Agile is not limited to software development and history shows that it started in manufacturing long before the Manifesto. 

It is not the result of research or the product of very intelligent people but rather a response to a fundamental change in the consumer behaviour, with more informed and savvy users where time to market become as important as quality.