Key success factors for the Agile Manifesto

Agile Citizen Development

Martin Kalliomaki Director| FTI Consulting Ireland

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?

Posted: Jan 11, 2021 12:06 PM

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Martin Kalliomaki Director| FTI Consulting Ireland

Feb 11, 2021 8:02 AM

Replying to Scott Ambler

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@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/

@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 ?

Thanks for the great input!

Martin

Posted: Feb 11, 2021 10:40 AM

Scott Ambler Consulting Methodologist| Ambysoft Inc. Toronto, Ontario, Canada

@Martin, I think it included the right thought leaders at the time. Alistair Cockburn did a really good job at gathering up a group of smart people. IMHO he doesn't get enough credit for that, and he's far too humble to speak up.

They chose to focus on software development at the time, not the greater issue of IT or even organizations in general. I think that was a smart move on their part. But because of that scoping decision they left out a lot of perspectives, which enabled them to do a really solid job on what they chose to focus on.

There are many different options for change, a (really tight, 16/16) change control board (CCB) being one. In fact, the Address Changing Stakeholder Needs process goal in DA (see https://www.pmi.org/disciplined-agile/cons...keholder-needs) explores a few dozen potential strategies for change management.

One example of a decentralized strategy is how Wikipedia works. They're maintaining information in general, not just a manifesto, but that strategy works.

I think they had a lot of confidence that it would stand the test of time and it did. They also had the wisdom to know that it would be a complete mess were they to open up the floodgates. Certainly the 10th anniversary effort went nowhere (did you even know about it?) and I highly suspect that the 20th anniversary festival's efforts will also not come too much other than some interesting conversations. Either they'll discover that there is an overwhelming number of great ideas for potential improvements, and there are, or they'll come up with some fluffy feel-good thing that doesn't really provide a lot of guidance. Hopefully I'm wrong.

Posted: Feb 11, 2021 11:12 AM

Abolfazl Yousefi Darestani Manager, Quality and Continuous Improvement| Hörmann-TNR Industrial Doors Newmarket, Ontario, Canada

Kiron and Sergio, both made good points.

Posted: Mar 24, 2021 6:20 PM

Scott Ambler Consulting Methodologist| Ambysoft Inc. Toronto, Ontario, Canada

I recently posted a copy of my original article about the results of the 10-year anniversary meeting of the Agile Manifesto at https://www.projectmanagement.com/blog-pos...hat-We-Believe. Unfortunately the original posting on Dr. Dobb's has been lost due to the magazine being shut down a few years ago.

It's an interesting read.

Posted: Mar 26, 2021 4:23 AM

Paphatpisit Klinklan Regional Sourcing and Operation Manager| Krones (Thailand) Co., Ltd Samutprakan, Thailand

Thanks for Question.

Posted: Mar 30, 2021 4:15 AM

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