I have been thinking about the process and the considerations made when the Agile Manifesto was created back in 2001. It would have been interesting to know what factors that were the most important and that led to a Manifesto and a mindset that is still relevant today.
What do you think and do you have experience from similar design processes yourself? Saving Changes...
The history behind the Manifesto is on the website (http://agilemanifesto.org/history.html) and it is impressive that seventeen professionals had the motivation to do something like this in the absence of the group collaboration platforms (e.g. Meetup) which we take for granted these days.
For any significant movement similar to this, having a group of thought leaders come together to establish some guiding values and principles is a good thing. However, the resistance to inspect & adapt the Manifesto at regular intervals has spawned a cottage industry of progeny including Modern Agile's values, Agnostic Agile's values and principles, and the (original) DA enhancements to the Manifesto.
Kiron Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
First of all, inside the name you will find the word "software" for a reason. It is the implementation of Agile approach (that was born in 1990 outside the software field) to the software field. I was part of the genesis in software then I can say you the movement in software was created to synthetize the use of object orientation and RAD/JAD techniques in the aim to find a solution to "the software crisis" mainly about the user requirements were not inside the final products. Second, is not a mindset only. Talking the definition of Agile created in 1990 it is a "way of thinking and behave with focus on client, value and quality". So, is to much a mindset. Some people forgot to read this: https://agilemanifesto.org/history.html which is very important to take into account. At the end, in my personal opinion, related to software, is still valid. And by the way, at lead a teorical/practical initiative inside the PMI where we adapt it to be used to all type of products and it worked. Saving Changes...
Scott AmblerConsulting Methodologist| Ambysoft Inc.Toronto, Ontario, Canada
In Disciplined Agile we had an extension to the Agile Manifesto that we called, drum roll please...., the DA Manifesto to address learnings since 2001 and to expand the scope beyond software. Having said that, we found the format of the original manifesto to constraining and decided to start fresh and developed the DA Mindset at https://www.pmi.org/disciplined-agile/mindset Saving Changes...
Hi all - apologies for the delay in coming back and thank you for the great responses.
@Kiron - what do you think an appropriate change mechanism would look like? The difficult follow up question is who is best suited to manage such a mechanism?
@Sergio - Do you remember, if at the time there was ever any controversy around who and how the Manifesto was created or was the community very much appreciative of the initiative?
@Scott - Thank you Scott. You mention elsewhere that the key constraints with the original Manifesto were cultural. It would be interesting to hear you elaborate on that point?
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2 replies by Kiron Bondale and Sergio Luis Conte
Feb 11, 2021 5:50 AM
Sergio Luis Conte
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Is not about a controversy. I did not try to write that. There is not controversy for me. Is about to stay clear that the Manifesto is the application of Agile to create software products with the initial intention to solve "the software crisis". But Agile is above that because it was created trying to find a superior alternative to Lean. So, when inside a company that is working to implement Agile, that company decides to use the Manifesto for Agile Software Development as a guide to implement Agile inside the software/IT business unit it will work (at least in my personal experience) but things like enterprise architecture has to be modified to support that.
Feb 11, 2021 8:25 AM
Kiron Bondale
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The majority of the writers of the original Manifesto have expressed no desire to update it and at least one is no longer with us, so it would need to be a new group of folks who pen a replacement if one is needed as opposed to just revising the existing one.
Kiron
Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
Feb 11, 2021 5:27 AM
Replying to Martin Kalliomaki
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Hi all - apologies for the delay in coming back and thank you for the great responses.
@Kiron - what do you think an appropriate change mechanism would look like? The difficult follow up question is who is best suited to manage such a mechanism?
@Sergio - Do you remember, if at the time there was ever any controversy around who and how the Manifesto was created or was the community very much appreciative of the initiative?
@Scott - Thank you Scott. You mention elsewhere that the key constraints with the original Manifesto were cultural. It would be interesting to hear you elaborate on that point?
Is not about a controversy. I did not try to write that. There is not controversy for me. Is about to stay clear that the Manifesto is the application of Agile to create software products with the initial intention to solve "the software crisis". But Agile is above that because it was created trying to find a superior alternative to Lean. So, when inside a company that is working to implement Agile, that company decides to use the Manifesto for Agile Software Development as a guide to implement Agile inside the software/IT business unit it will work (at least in my personal experience) but things like enterprise architecture has to be modified to support that. Saving Changes...
Scott AmblerConsulting Methodologist| Ambysoft Inc.Toronto, Ontario, Canada
@Martin, a few thoughts: First, the original 17 authors decided that the only way they would change their manifesto would be that all living (now 16) writers would have to agree to the change. Several of them are clear that they're not willing to do so, as is their pejorative.
After trying to convince them to evolve the manifesto, even at the 10th anniversary meeting where this was one of the topics up for debate, the decision still held. I wrote a detailed column about this for the April 2011 issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal if you still have back issues (their original site seems to have lost the text). So the DA community decided to move forward and extend the manifesto as we saw fit. Other groups since then have made similar decisions.
This month during the Agile20Reflect festival the evolution of the manifesto is a topic being discussed in several sessions, including a panel on Feb 12 where DA's Mark Lines is involved. See https://agile20reflect.org/event/an-agile-...futurespective/
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1 reply by Martin Kalliomaki
Feb 11, 2021 10:40 AM
Martin Kalliomaki
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@Scott
Firstly, thank you so much for sharing this and providing an absolutely unique perspective.
This is the first time I get a feeling for the sentiment that existed when the Manifesto was first published. As someone that wasn’t there I have been speculating about how the community perceived the creation of the first Manifesto. Did it include the right thought leaders? Were all the appropriate interests represented? It must have been a tough balancing act even, as you point out, despite the fact that diversity and independence did not need to be considered in 2001!
I hope you don’t mind but since I have your attention I will take the opportunity to ask two questions that I have been pondering:
You mentioned that the original terms of reference for the Agile Alliance included a somewhat clunky change mechanism (i.e. 16/16). In relation to similar exercises, is there an example of a change mechanism that have worked well?
Also, almost all Manifesto’s I have encountered are centrally controlled – is there an example of a similar exercise that have been decentralized?
Finally, with respect to the governance model put in place – they had a lot of confidence in the Manifesto standing the test of time ?
Hi all - apologies for the delay in coming back and thank you for the great responses.
@Kiron - what do you think an appropriate change mechanism would look like? The difficult follow up question is who is best suited to manage such a mechanism?
@Sergio - Do you remember, if at the time there was ever any controversy around who and how the Manifesto was created or was the community very much appreciative of the initiative?
@Scott - Thank you Scott. You mention elsewhere that the key constraints with the original Manifesto were cultural. It would be interesting to hear you elaborate on that point?
The majority of the writers of the original Manifesto have expressed no desire to update it and at least one is no longer with us, so it would need to be a new group of folks who pen a replacement if one is needed as opposed to just revising the existing one.
Kiron Saving Changes...
Scott AmblerConsulting Methodologist| Ambysoft Inc.Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Second, regarding the question around controversy, it depended on your mindset and background. To put things into context, I was a contributing editor at Software Development magazine at the time. Although some of the details about what actually happened are now shrouded in mythology, the real story about the publication of the manifesto has been lost. It was several months after the Snowbird meeting that the text was finalized, after many rounds of wordsmithing. Although there was some online chatter about it in the following months, it didn't really take off until Jim Highsmith and Martin Fowler wrote an article about the manifesto for the August 2001 issue of Software Development (unfortunately the text of that article isn't online at the DDJ site either, but I bet there's scanned copies online somewhere). That was when it hit the mainstream.
For many developers it was a breath of fresh air, we were relieved that someone had finally put down on paper what we all inherently suspected. BUT, for many people it was heresy because it wasn't what they'd been taught.
For the most part it blew the minds of the software modeling community, one of the things that motivated my work in what eventually became Agile Modeling (http://agilemodeling.com). To be fair, there were few modelers in the original 17, other than Steve Mellor who has published some brilliant work about software modeling and arguably Jeff Sutherland who a few years earlier his company had brought a really good CASE tool to market (I loved it, but it failed when Smalltalk tanked).
It blew the minds of the data community, which motivated further work in what became the Agile Data method (http://AgileData.org) so as to prove how completely and utterly wrong they were. There wasn't anybody as far as I could tell that had a deep data background at Snowbird and the manifesto shows it. At the time, and to a lesser extent it's still true today, there was a great divide between data professionals and software developers.
It blew the minds of the project management community, because there was a loud and clear message that agile software development teams didn't need managers. Although there were people at Snowbird with management experience, and who were managing teams at the time in some cases, the manifesto itself was a push back against questionable management theory that didn't reflect the realities of software development (many managers still struggle with this, btw, but I'm working on it). It certainly didn't help that some of the manifesto writers, Bob Martin in particular, were running around saying things like "Project managers are the people we send to fetch pizza for us."
So there was a bit of controversy at the time.
However, I don't remember anything along the lines of "This was written but a group of middle-aged white guys" because, frankly, we just weren't aware enough at the time I suspect. Or woke enough if you like that terminology.
A few years later, I'm thinking 2005+, as it spread internationally and agile ran into cultures that were very different than those in North America, we started to become aware of the differences. Some of us, including myself, would explain some aspects of agile culture around the lines of "Whoa dude! It's like gnarly California surfing culture man! Go with the flow dude!" ;-). Saving Changes...
Scott AmblerConsulting Methodologist| Ambysoft Inc.Toronto, Ontario, Canada
@Martin,
Continuing the controversy discussion, there was opportunity to point it out. For the August 2002 issue I wrote The Fragile Manifesto at https://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-d...festo/184414888 (for some reason this goofiness has been kept, yet real content was not, ugh).
Unfortunately the comments have been lost, but I distinctly remember we had several from people who thought that was I wrote was real. At the end of the article you can see it's an April fools joke published several months late because I had taken a traditional approach. Apparently I was preaching to some of our readership and they fell for it. One of the great things about Software Development is that we had a very wide range of readership.
A side effect of this article was that for the next several years my April column was an April Fool's joke. I worked hard to make them sound like reasonable ideas, only to become more and more unreasonable the further you got into the column. Sometimes we received feedback from people who thought it was real, which I considered a complete win.
Interestingly, I wrote one April Fool's column at the time about tooling that would take data generated by development tools to automatically write a status report. It described an imaginary tool in the Eclipse program, which I was a contributor to back in the day, that did this. This was a completely imaginary tool at the time. Fast forward just a few years and we had dashboard technology that effectively did this, which in the early 2010s was a bit radical but worked in practice. Now this tooling is the norm. So my joke column was unknowingly a predictive column. Joke was on me. Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
Please let me comment something based in my personal experience only. And is not because @Scott is participating here, just to add some information based in my experience, let me say that when I saw the Disciplined Agile Manifesto (I do not know if it is the extension to the Agile Manifesto @Scott is talking about) long time ago (it was written before the PMI put its hands on DA and I follow @Scott work from the first time they published them) I used it and it works better than the original Manifesto mainly when you try to put in place Agile beyond the software/IT which is my case from 1995 (I know @Scott wrote it time after). Here the reasons in my case: 1-responding to feedback working better than responding to change because it is aligned with the definition of Agile I talked above which consider system theory as a pillar (organizations are adaptable and open systems) and the fact that Agile provides agility which is the ability to respond to changes and to create changes. 2-Consumable Solutions, the use of using Solution instead of software, because Agile is about to create solutions that allow organizations as a system to achieve the key objectives which are survive, growth and develop. Then, they have to create solutions that solve people/community problems and in this way they are delivering value. 3-One of the key things or pillars of Agile is quality and to define quality organizations have to define which is "client" but others confuse with "customer". Then, we adopt the use of Stakeholder instead of Customer like the DA Manifesto do. Usually in the places where I have the pleasure to work we use the definition "client is the next in the process chain" but because the "debates" between client and customer we adopted Stakeholder. 4-DA Manifesto added the statement about Transparency. We change the line removing the adjective "false" from predictability. We understand the intention. So, that´s what I can say regarding something that works for me including today no matter in my actual work place we are not using DA (at least for the moment). Saving Changes...
