Ambiguity about "Agile"

I was part of the group that defined agile from the very begining that was outside software and in the goup that took it to apply it in the software field. Agile was born in manufacturing in 1991 in the USA DoD/NSF Agility Forum at Leihigh University. That is the foundation and companies that understand that were succeful using agile to gain competitive advantages. Time after people that owns object oriented methods to create software products took the agile name to call those methods. Simple thing: go to the basement.

Thank you, Saleha. I see "methodology" as a vehicle to reduce the ambiguity of a culture.

In case fun and useful, my three favorite quotations about ambiguity.

There is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the ambiguity of words. – Thomas Reid

Life punishes the vague wish and rewards the specific ask. If you want confusion and heartache, ask vague questions. If you want uncommon clarity and results, ask uncommonly clear questions. – Tim Ferriss

It is our responsibility to communicate so clearly that we are understood and so precisely that we cannot possibly be misunderstood. - Todd Hunt

It would be interesting to see "agile" become even broader. As you reinforced, there's already so much under the umbrella of agile. You're right. Maybe we'll jam even more under the umbrella of "agile."

I find the economics around agile also interesting because frequency is not free, and agile's favoring meetings over documentation results in meeting gridlock and communication traffic jams. Last I checked, no one in any kind of traffic jam is going fast.

An interesting Corporate Town Hall titled, "What Does Agile Mean to Us?" 😊

And the counterpoint, "What is Agile NOT and Who's Working That Way?" 😊

Culture traits that agile seems to not promote includes simplicity, synchronization, low latency, and low marginal cost.

Hi Sreesudha. Yes, I understand that agile sets scope one sprint at a time, so it partitions scope and accepts ambiguity of long-term scope. My concern is not ambiguity within agile work. My concern is the ambiguity of the term "agile."

You point out another common point of view about agile, that it doesn't know everything upfront. This suggests that all non-agile work DOES "know everything upfront." I don't think that's true. A more pragmatic, defensible claim about agile is simply "high frequency go-live events." The contrast with waterfall is "low frequency go-live events." But I don't believe waterfall work claims, "We know everything upfront." Fair?

But the more important point in my post here is that I'm struggling with numerous definitions (and appendages over 25+ years) about the bulletproof, invincible term "agile."

I wrote/published a couple books a couple years ago, and editors often say to first-time authors, "If your book is for everyone, your book is for no one." I'm not saying that agile claims to be for everyone, but often, it feels like agile is trying to "be all things." For some of us, "agile" practices are now squishy. The term "agile" is squishy. "Squishy" feels low discipline. With anything agile or hybrid, I don't know what (if anything) is being claimed as "discipline" anymore. Is frequency (sprints) the primary non-negotiable? Is the agile community still treating discipline and speed as synonymous? Even that false equivalence is low discipline.

Robert, The ambiguity of the term agile does not bother me; it is just a matter of life that we try to describe something, and many people do so considering their contexts, experiences, and perceived pains. Other ambiguous terms I see in our profession are success, value, even project, program, and leadership. All of these change over time, as more people adapt them and others try to make them unambiguous. Sometimes a strong authority helps: in a country, a national standard; globally, less authoritative ISO standards; and in big communities, practice standards. For me, on an abstract level, agility is not even a mindset, but a human and natural feature of life itself, as anything that lives will adapt to changing environments. Look at your garden.

If so, we always practiced agility in project management, and I can say that from my first project in 1974.

Thank you, Thomas. Great points about ambiguity ... low clarity on the other terms you mention. As you can tell, I associate agile with ambiguity.

For discipline in innovation teamwork, I don't look to anything "agile."

For clarity in innovation teamwork, I don't look to anything "agile."

I am not a gardener.😊 As a musician and a Salsa/Bachata dancer, I see teamwork through the eyes (the metaphor) of the performing arts, which have a lot of discipline, clarity, rhythm, patterns, and muscle memory! Ambiguity in the collaborative performing arts is not a good thing.