About ‘Context of Agile’
On February 11-13 2001 seventeen people got together in Snowbird, Utah (USA) and from that meeting the Manifesto for Agile Software Development emerged. They recount some of the history of the creation of the manifesto here.
That’s now more than 20 years ago and most people who “work agile” today will not be familiar with the historical context of the manifesto. The purpose of this site is to collect resources that provide that historical context, and commentaries on the manifesto and on Agile.
One aspect of that context that’s worth nothing here is that the manifesto was a synthesis of what the authors had uncovered about “better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it.” As such, the manifesto was a crystalization of something that was happening within the software community. For a variety of reasons, not everyone who was uncovering better ways of developing software at that time had the opportunity to contribute to the manifesto.
Curious about recent changes? Take a look at the commit history!
Before Agile
Managing the Development of Large Software Systems - Dr. Winston W Royce, August 1970
http://www-scf.usc.edu/~csci201/lectures/Lecture11/royce1970.pdf
Paper that is often cited as the origin of the waterfall model, while also being very critical of it.
Software Engineering - Barry Boehm, August 1976
https://web.archive.org/web/20190910093920/http://csse.usc.edu/TECHRPTS/1976/usccse76-500/usccse76-500.pdf
Article by Barry Boehm about the current state of the art and of future trends in software engineering. Section “II. Definitions” contains a diagram of the software life cycle that looks like waterfall. The diagram is very similar to Figure 3 in Royce’s 1970 paper, yet Boehm does not cite it.
Unifying Software Engineering and Systems Engineering - Barry Boehm, March 2000
https://web.archive.org/web/20170810170441/http://csse.usc.edu/TECHRPTS/2000/usccse2000-506/usccse2000-506.pdf
At the start of this article Barry Boehm mentions he “participated in a group at TRW that created a corporate software engineering
culture around the sequential requirements-driven waterfall model. […]
We did not realize how effective this culture change was until we tried to undo parts of it a few years later. By the early 1980s, we and other companies realized that the waterfall model was ineffective for developing user-interactive systems, […]”
The Leprechauns of Software Engineering - Laurent Bossavit, 2015
https://leanpub.com/leprechauns
Chapter 7: Who’s afraid of the Big Bad Waterfall? argues that Royce inventing waterfall is a myth.
Waterfall, Royce and Boehm - Laurent Bossavit, November 2017
https://twitter.com/Morendil/status/932865620613521408
In this Twitter thread Laurent Bossavit argues that we should read Boehm, not Royce, to understand waterfall.
Agile Converstations - Douglas Squirrel and Jeffrey Fredrick, 2020
https://agileconversations.com/agile-conversation-book/
Chapter 1: Escaping the Software Factory has a few pages on software development in the nineties.
Getting over the Waterfall, Deconstructing sequential development to better understand more continuous development - Kevlin Henney, August 2021
https://kevlinhenney.medium.com/getting-over-the-waterfall-c090c6228ca9
In this article Kevlin Henney examines the motivation and attraction of sequential development (the waterfall approach) to better understand more agile approaches to software development.
What is Agile? - James Shore, October 2021
https://www.jamesshore.com/v2/books/aoad2/what_is_agile
First chapter of the 2nd edition of James Shore’s “The Art of Agile Development”
BONUS: a circle-centric reading of software development through the 1990s, plus screech owls - Brian Marick, 21 July 2023
https://podcast.oddly-influenced.dev/episodes/bonus-a-circle-centric-reading-of-software-development-through-the-1990s-plus-screech-owls
https://mstdn.social/@marick/110703481860773401 (part of Brian Marick’s research for the podcast episode)
In this podcast episode Brian Marick does a great job describing the state of software development before agile and how the early Agilists started doing something different based on “change is opportunity” and “if it hurts, do it more often”.
Timeline
Disclaimer: This timeline is a work-in-progress and as such does not present a balanced view.
The list of sources can be found on the Sources page.
1980s
1986
- Jan 1: The New New Product Development Game
Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka publish their article “The New New Product Development Game”, which introduces the term “scrum” in the context of product development.
1990s
1993
- Birth of Scrum
Jeff Sutherland invents Scrum at a company called Easel after reading “The New New Product Development Game” (source: Sutherland2014 p32-33)
1994
- Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM)
First release of DSDM (source: Abrahamsson 2003)
1995
- SCRUM development process paper
Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber present the “SCRUM development process” paper at an Assocation for Computing Machinery research conference (source: Sutherland2014 p33)
1996
- Mar 6: first Extreme Programming project
start of first Extreme Programming project at Chrysler (source: Wells 1999, Beck 2005 p125-129)
1997
- Feature-driven development (FDD)
Jeff De Luca devises FDD to meet the needs of a specific project.
1998
- Crystal
(source: Abrahamsson 2003)
1999
- Internet-speed development
(source: Abrahamsson 2003) - Oct: Extreme Programming Explained by Kent Beck
first book on Extreme Programming
2000s
2000
- Adaptive Software Development
(source: Abrahamsson 2003) - Pragmatic Programming
(source: Abrahamsson 2003)
2001
- Feb 11- 13: Manifesto for Agile Software Development
gathering at The Lodge, Snowbird ski resort, Utah, USA from which the Manifesto emerged (source: Highsmith 2001) - Agile Alliance founded
2002
- A Practical Guide to Feature-Driven Development by S. R. Palmer and J. M. Felsing
(source: Abrahamsson 2003) - Agile Modeling (AM)
(source: Abrahamsson 2003) - Feb: Agile Software Development with SCRUM by Ken Schwaber, Mike Beedle
2004
- Nov: Extreme Programming Explained, 2nd edition by Kent Beck
2007
- Nov: The Art of Agile Development by James Shore
2010s
2010
- Feb: The Scrum Guide, v1
first version of the Scrum Guide, which contains the definition of Scrum
2011
- Jul: The Scrum Guide, v2
second version of the Scrum Guide, which contains the definition of Scrum - Oct: The Scrum Guide, v3
third version of the Scrum Guide, which contains the definition of Scrum
2013
- Jul: The Scrum Guide, v4
fourth version of the Scrum Guide, which contains the definition of Scrum
2016
- Heart of Agile
Reframing of Agile around four imperatives by Alistair Cockburn - Modern Agile
Reframing of Agile around four guiding principles by Joshua Kerievsky - Jul: The Scrum Guide, v5
fifth version of the Scrum Guide, which contains the definition of Scrum
2017
- Nov: The Scrum Guide, v6
sixth version of the Scrum Guide, which contains the definition of Scrum
2020s
2020
- Nov: The Scrum Guide, v7
seventh version of the Scrum Guide, which contains the definition of Scrum
2021
- Oct: The Art of Agile Development, 2nd Edition by James Shore
History
History of the Manifesto
History: The Agile Manifesto - Jim Highsmith, 2001
https://agilemanifesto.org/history.html
History page on the Agile Manifesto site
Agile Manifesto Feb 2001 - Jon Kern, 2018, 2024
https://www.flickr.com/photos/jonkyonthespot/albums/72157694973541365/
Pictures from a gathering of software development practitioners of “lightweight” processes atop Snowbird, Utah.
How I saved Agile and the Rest of the World - Alistair Cockburn, 19 May 2016
https://web.archive.org/web/20170626102447/alistair.cockburn.us/How+I+saved+Agile+and+the+Rest+of+the+World
Alistair Cockburn describes how the Agile Manifesto was the product of 17 people from different schools and backgrounds. The addition or removal of a single person would have resulted in a different manifesto.
Manifesto Series - Agile Uprising Podcast, Oct 2016 to Mar 2017
https://agileuprising.libsyn.com/category/Manifesto+Series
Series of interviews with 14 of the 17 Manifesto authors: Jon Kern, Alistair Cockburn, Bob Martin, Arie van Bennekum, Mike Beedle, Andy Hunt, Brian Marick, Jeff Sutherland, Ron Jeffries, James Grenning, Jim Highsmith, Martin Fowler, Stephen Mellor, Ken Schwaber.
The Creation Of The Agile Manifesto - Ken Schwaber, 1 March 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfQIjf2TPdk
Short video of Ken Schwaber discussing how the Agile Manifesto came about.
The Winter Getaway That Turned the Software World Upside Down - Caroline Mimbs Nyce, 8 December 2017
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/12/agile-manifesto-a-history/547715/
Article about how the Agile Manifesto came about. Contains reflections on Agile by several of the Manifesto’s co-authors at the end.
Pictures and notes from the Agile Manifesto Meeting - Alistair Cockburn, 27 March 2018
https://twitter.com/TotherAlistair/status/978413240182034432
https://www.facebook.com/TotherAlistair/posts/10156214284634035
Pictures and notes from the Agile Manifesto Meeting, shared by Alistair Cockburn. Pictures owned by Ward Cunningham.
The Agile Manifesto: History and Evolution With Co-Authors Arie van Bennekum and James Grenning, 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fDhSwN2YVw
Interview with Arie van Bennekum and James Grenning about why they decided to go to Snowbird, their experiences in software development before and after the Manifesto, how to adopt an agile way of working, and the future of agile.
The Manifesto for Agile Software Development is an historical artifact - Jeff Sutherland, 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wXHGIqd_ag
Jeff Sutherland explains the Agile Manifesto is a historical artifact and none of the authors want to change it. It is what it is.
How The Agile Manifesto Came To Be - Jeff Sutherland, 11 February 2021
https://www.scruminc.com/how-the-agile-manifesto-came-to-be/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGdi3zZutXk
Jeff Sutherland describes how the Agile Manifesto came to be, 20 years later.
3 Decades of History and Stories about Agile - Alistair Cockburn, 16 February 2021
https://youtu.be/fG6N-QNDblM?t=335
Alistair Cockburn talks about what happened in the ’90s that lead up to the writing of the Manifesto. And he relates how the Manifesto was written and published.
On the relationship between Extreme Programming and the Agile Manifesto - Paul Dyson, 11 June 2021
https://twitter.com/pauldyson/status/1403463775513157643
Paul Dyson explains his appreciation for Extreme Programming and that he never quite got the relationship between XP and the Agile Manifesto.
Scrum, XP and “Agile” started anti-management - Alistair Cockburn, 16 June 2021
https://twitter.com/TotherAlistair/status/1405248217835622402?t=R6MsRgJ4_i4jbaYbv1-GGg
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1405184303126953987.html
Alistair Cockburn shares his knowledge on the background and history of how Scrum was designed to work in hostile environments with strong mangement pressure.
What is Agile? - James Shore, October 2021
https://www.jamesshore.com/v2/books/aoad2/what_is_agile
First chapter of the 2nd edition of James Shore’s “The Art of Agile Development”
The 90’s context of agile phrases - Steve Cooper, 28 November 2021
https://twitter.com/stevecooperorg/status/1464858673604407300
Steve Cooper clarifies the 90’s context of the Agile values: Jackson structured programming, 500-page detailed specs, wall-covering Gantt charts.
The second Agile Manifesto meeting, November 2001 at the OOPLSA conference - Brian Marick, 15 March 2023
https://mstdn.social/@marick/110024173719448290
Brian Marick reflects on the second Agile Manifesto meeting, November 2001 at the OOPLSA conference, an enormously botched opportunity, because the co-authors were too damn alpha-male-ish to ever agree again. He also shares the first Agile Manifesto had gone similarly, had not a few people split off and came back with the https://agilemanifesto.org/ in something close to its current form.
History of Agile methodologies
New Directions on Agile Methods: A Comparative Analysis - Pekka Abrahamsson, Juhani Warsta, Mikko T. Siponen and Jussi Ronkainen, 2003
People
B
- Kent Beck
- co-author of the Manifesto
Extreme Programming - Mike Beedle
- co-author of the Manifesto
Scrum - Arie van Bennekum
- co-author of the Manifesto
Dynamic Systems Development Method
C
- Alistair Cockburn
- co-author of the Manifesto
Crystal Clear - Ward Cunningham
- co-author of the Manifesto
Extreme Programming
F
- Martin Fowler
- co-author of the Manifesto
G
- Adele Goldberg
- co-author of Succeeding With Objects: Decision Frameworks for Project Management
- James Grenning
- co-author of the Manifesto
H
- Jim Highsmith
- co-author of the Manifesto
Adaptive Software Development - Jon Hopkins
- organizer of the Workshop on Object-Oriented Design (WOOD) workshops
- Andrew Hunt
- co-author of the Manifesto
Pragmatic Programming
J
- Ron Jeffries
- co-author of the Manifesto Extreme Programming
K
- Jon Kern
- co-author of the Manifesto
M
- Brian Marick
- co-author of the Manifesto
- Robert C. Martin
- co-author of the Manifesto
- Steve Mellor
- co-author of the Manifesto
S
- Ken Schwaber
- co-author of the Manifesto
Scrum - Jennifer Stapleton
- Dynamic Systems Development Method
- Jeff Sutherland
- co-author of the Manifesto
Scrum
T
- Dave Thomas
- co-author of the Manifesto
Pragmatic Programming
W
- Rebecca Wirfs-Brock
- co-author of Designing Object-Oriented Software
- Gerald (Jerry) M. Weinberg
- sometimes called the grandfather of Agile Programming
Commentaries
By one of the authors
We Tried Baseball and It Didn’t Work - Ron Jeffries, 2 May 2006
https://ronjeffries.com/xprog/articles/jatbaseball/
Ron Jeffries describes how a group of people tried baseball after ‘fixing’ some of the rules to come to the conclusion that even with all these improvements, the game is no fun at all. “We tried baseball, and it didn’t work.”
Artisanal Retro-Futurism Team-Scale Anarcho-Syndicalism - Brian Marick, 15-16 June 2009
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5yv-WcQ4wY (audio improves at 3:20 and again at 15:15)
http://arxta.net/explanation.html
Brian Marick about how the core of Agile has gone missing in the 2000s and what that core is/was.
Beyond Agile: New Principles? - Ron Jeffries, 27 August 2010
https://ronjeffries.com/xprog/articles/beyond-agile-new-principles/
Ron Jeffries asks the question if the Agile Manifesto needs to be updated since it’s hard to live up to its values and principles. His answer is that we should raise our game instead.
The Agile Manifesto, Elaborated - Jeff Sutherland, 20 April 2012
https://www.scruminc.com/agile-manifesto-elaborated-2/
Part of “Agile Principles and Values” by Jeff Sutherland. The discrepancy in publishing dates suggests at least one of them is incorrect.
Agile is Dead (Long Live Agility) - Dave Thomas, 2014-2015
https://pragdave.me/blog/2014/03/04/time-to-kill-agile.html (4 March 2014)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpGGRAhes2k (Rethink Dallas, 6 December 2014)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-BOSpxYJ9M (GOTO Amsterdam, 17-19 June 2015)
Dave Thomas argues we have lost the word “Agile” and should try to hang on to the word “agility” as a label for doing things in an agile fashion.
Agile Principles and Values - Jeff Sutherland, 28 April 2015
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd997578.aspx
Jeff Sutherland’s commentary on the four Agile values and a section on Agile being an umbrella term, not a methodology. Part of it published as “The Agile Manifesto, Elaborated” with an inconsistent publishing date.
Developers Should Abandon Agile - Ron Jeffries, 10 May 2018
https://ronjeffries.com/articles/018-01ff/abandon-1/
Ron Jeffries advises developers to abandon adherence to any “Agile” method of any kind, since they mostly end up as Faux Agile or Dark Agile. Instead, developers should turn their attention and learing to ways of doing software development that adhere to the foundational principles that support Agile Software Development.
Nothing useful to say about the current relevance of the movement called Agile - Brian Marick, 5 March 2022
https://twitter.com/marick/status/1499905649970397189
Brian Marick announcing that he has nothing useful to say about the current relevance of the movement called Agile, because he hasn’t worked with a programming team for about 10 years. He does encourage those who’d try to recover its original spirit.
You Won’t Believe What These Agile Founders Think About Today’s ‘Agile’! - Brett Maytom, 24 February 2023
https://web.archive.org/web/20230227090008/https://blog.womplers.com/p/you-wont-believe-what-these-agile
Brett Maytom collected 25 quotes (with references!) from the authors of the Manifesto about Agile spanning a period from 2001 to 2016. As you can imagine they’re quite critical of what has become of Agile.
Waterfall Over Agile In 2023??? - Kent Beck and David Farley, 14 May 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4ihLROXzPk
Kent Beck and David Farley discuss why waterfall still persists and is perhaps even making a comeback. The power structures haven’t changed. The fiction of “just doing it right the first time” is too attractive.
Complaints against agile match what agile complained about 25 years ago - Brian Marick, 16 August 2023
https://mstdn.social/@marick/110899650132163148
Brian Marick shares “the most amazingly disheartening thread”. Complaints against current agile match what agile itself complained about 25 years ago: making people fungible, Taylorism, micromanagement, empty ceremony.
By others
2010s
Manifesto for Half-Arsed Agile Software Development - Kerry Buckley, August 2010
http://www.halfarsedagilemanifesto.org/
Manifesto by Kerry Buckley that parodies how enterprise companies tend to adopt Agile, i.e. not truly.
Agile Ruined My Life - Daniel Markham, 7 September 2010
https://web.archive.org/web/20100910225833/http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2010/09/agile-ruined-my.php
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1669075
https://testobsessed.com/2010/09/agile-backlash/
Daniel Markham shares his views on the problems with Agile coaches and consultants.
The Agile Acid Test - Elisabeth Hendrickson, 14 December 2010
https://testobsessed.com/2010/12/the-agile-acid-test/
Elisabeth Hendrickson shares her Agile Acid Test to determine if a team really is Agile. It consists of three questions: How Frequently Do You Deliver?, Could You Continue at This Pace Indefinitely? and How Does the Team Handle Change?
A decade of agile methodologies: Towards explaining agile software development - Torgeir Dingsøyr, Sridhar Nerur, VenuGopal Balijepally, Nils Brede Moe, June 2012
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0164121212000532?via%3Dihub
Article examining the state of research on Agile software development and providing suggestions for future research.
Dropping the ‘agile’ from ‘software development’: Why ‘agile’ is still the new name for methodology - Peter Hilton, 30 July 2014
https://hilton.org.uk/blog/dropping-the-agile
Peter Hilton reflects on the question to what degree there’s still value in talking about ‘agile’ instead of just talking about ’software development.
Why Scaling Agile Doesn’t Work (and what to do about it) - Jez Humble, December 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zYxWEZ0gYg
Jez Humble argues that scaling Agile does not work, because Agile is only one piece of the puzzle. The acitivities before and after the Agile software development-part need to be addressed. He continues with proposing five things we should do in those areas.
Agile revisited - Dan North, 2015-2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcLbkmvqfiY (GOTO London, September 2015)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFLBG_bilrg (GOTO Copenhagen, October 2016, better audio)
Dan North recounts the history of Agile from the 1990s to the 2010s and argues that the next step for Agile is to review the premise that lead to Agile in the first place, i.e. Lean operations. He closes by sharing an updates version of the Agile Manifesto.
Agility should pay attention to Sociology - Romeu Moura, 4 May 2018
https://medium.com/@Romeu/agility-should-pay-attention-to-sociology-b671fd056933
Romeu Moura reflects on how Bourdieu’s social theory (more specifically Symbolic Violence, Hexis and Cultural capital) applies to the methods we use to create software today. He concludes there is a need for safety, but that our current approaches are extremely naïve about how achievable that safety is and to what degree of safety.
The Power in Agile - Sarah Mei, 14 July 2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL-6RCTywbc
Critical examination of how the lack of diversity among the authors of the Agile Manifesto resulted in ignoring power dynamics and what that means for a practice like pair programming
Agile won the war but lost the peace - Allan Kelly, 8 November 2018
https://www.allankellyassociates.co.uk/archives/2762/agile-won-the-war-but-lost-the-peace/
Allan Kelly argues that everyone is agile now, but that kind of agile is not living up to the original dream of agile.
Back to the future: origins and directions of the “Agile Manifesto” - views of the originators - Philipp Hohl, Jil Klünder, Arie van Bennekum, Ryan Lockard, James Gifford, Jürgen Münch, Michael Stupperich & Kurt Schneider, 9 November 2018
https://jserd.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40411-018-0059-z
Article focusing on the origins of the manifesto, the contributors’ views from today’s perspective, and their outlook on future directions: “The original contributors emphasize that agile methods need to be carefully selected and agile should not be seen as a silver bullet. They underline the importance of considering the variety of different practices and methods that had an influence on the development of the manifesto. Furthermore, they mention that people should question their current understanding of “agile” and recommend reconsidering the of ideas of the manifesto.”
AgileKillsKittens (or Agile In Their Own Words: The Problem With Agile & Scrum) - rayfrankenstein (ed.), 14 July 2019 until present
https://github.com/rayfrankenstein/AITOW/blob/master/README.md
A curated list of negative developer comments about Agile and Scrum on social media
Why Don’t We Just Call Agile What It Is: Feminist - Hanna Thomas Uose, 3 September 2019
https://medium.com/@Hanna.Thomas/why-dont-we-just-call-agile-what-it-is-feminist-8bdd9193edba
Hanna Thomas Uose argues that we should not only look at tech and manufacturing companies when it comes to Lean-Agile. The Agile Manifesto is inherently subversive, anti-authoritarian, and feminist. The Lean-Agile principles of experimentation, of collaboration, of support and iteration have been a part of progressive social movements since before the Manifesto. In this sense, successful organisations aren’t ones that adopt an ‘Agile mindset’. Successful organisations are ones that adopt a feminist, queer, anti-establishment, progressive mindset - one that is flexible, experimental, pushes boundaries, self-organises, and acts in service of community.
2020s
Agile as a Zombie…Noun - Charles Lambdin, 27 January 2020
https://charleslambdin.com/2020/01/27/agile-as-a-zombienoun/
Article that argues that “Agile” is a “nominalization”, a “zombie noun”. It’s used in too abstract a way, divorced from anything sensory-specific. As such, it leads to illusory alignment, because most often the conversation does not proceed to speciffics, to the what, who, and how.
Agile as Trauma - Dorian Taylor, 8 February 2020
https://doriantaylor.com/agile-as-trauma
Article that argues that the Agile Manifesto is an immune response on the part of programmers to bad management, it’s an expression of trauma. As such Agile remains a tactical, technical, and ultimately reactionary movement. To move beyond, it is important to place Agile in a wider context, both historically and in the context of the invariant idiosyncrasies of software development.
The Agile values 20 years later - Romeu Moura, 12 February 2021
https://medium.com/@Romeu/the-agile-values-20-years-later-63279a067d80
Deep dive into the four core values of Agile 20 years after the Manifesto
“Software development culture as a literal cult” - @arclight, 25 February 2021
https://twitter.com/arclight/status/1364951333216923653
Twitter thread arguing there’s a really destructive coercive atmosphere around tools, practices, and methodologies today that didn’t exist 25years ago
How Much Lean is in Today’s “Agile”? - Michael Mahlberg, Johanna Rothman, March 2021
https://www.agilealliance.org/how-much-lean-is-in-todays-agile-part-i/
https://www.agilealliance.org/adaptability-enhances-how-we-work/
https://www.agilealliance.org/looking-at-systems-to-enhance-outcomes/
https://www.agilealliance.org/explain-dates-to-anyone-with-forecasts-based-on-your-historical-data/
https://www.agilealliance.org/a-little-lean-can-create-a-whole-lot-of-positive-change/
Five part series exploring the observation that although agile approaches owe their history to lean principles, the authors see very little lean thinking in many supposedly agile endeavours
Advocating against Agile methods - Geepaw Hill, 19 April 2021
https://twitter.com/GeePawHill/status/1384234186127536134
Geepaw Hill shares five reasons why he advocates against adopting any of the current “Agile” methods.
Agile at 20: The Failed Rebellion - Al Tenhundfeld, 23 July 2021
https://www.simplethread.com/agile-at-20-the-failed-rebellion/
20 years after the Manifesto Al Tenhundfeld reflects on how Agile won (nobody wants to be called non-Agile), yet Agile as practiced also falls woefully short of the revolutionary ideas of its founders.
What is Post Agile? - Dave Farley, 11 August, 2021
https://youtu.be/4OtI6s-rTOE
Dave Farley argues that the real Post Agile move is to apply scienctific-style reasoning to software in order to create an engineering discipline for software. That discipline will not replace the Agile Manifesto, but significantly increase our chances to achieve Agile’s values and principles.
There Are No More Early Adopters of Agile - Esther Derby and Matthew Carlson, 29 September 2021, 22 November 2021
https://changebyattraction.simplecast.com/episodes/no-more-early-adopters
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuZ39j7UE20
In this podcast and webinar Esther Derby and Matthew Carlson discuss adoption of Agile 20 years after the Manifesto. While the early adopters were motivated by efficiency and effectiveness, the current (i.e. late) adopters are motivated by legitimacy. And this affects what will be a succesful road to adoption and what won’t.
What is Agile? - James Shore, October 2021
https://www.jamesshore.com/v2/books/aoad2/what_is_agile
First chapter of the 2nd edition of James Shore’s “The Art of Agile Development” including sections about why Agile won, why it works, and why it fails.
Agility ≠ Speed: Software development benefits from a sense of direction - Kevlin Henney, 22 November 2021
https://kevlinhenney.medium.com/agility-speed-96057078fe40
Kevlin Henney reflects on agility, speed, and velocity. He notes that most velocity metrics are actually speed metrics, which are just utlitisation or estimation metrics. Velocity, however, implies a direction next to a speed. He concludes by saying that agility is not just about that kind of velocity (a sustainable pace in an optimal direction), but also requires the ability to easily change both speed and direction.
Pondering Agile Principles - Benji Weber, 30 January 2022
https://benjiweber.co.uk/blog/2022/01/30/pondering-agile-principles/
Benji Weber takes a critical look at the 12 Agile principles and suggests updated versions
Rewilding Agile - Dave Snowden, 7 February 2022
https://twitter.com/TheCynefinCo/status/1490704381590781954
Dave Snowden talks about rewilding Agile, i.e. restoring balance and integrity to it. With Agile entering the commoditization phase, it has lost lots of its original energy. We can’t go back. but we can move forward. The Cynefin framework allows us to do this.
Agile and the Long Crisis of Software - Miriam Posner, 7 April 2022
https://logicmag.io/clouds/agile-and-the-long-crisis-of-software/
Atricle that outlines the history of software development from the 1960s up to the Agile Manifesto. It then proceeds to argue the current crisis in software development is the Agile crisis. Agile is not delivering the liberatory experience it’s billed as. In a corporate context, its methods and values are also invariably oriented to the imperatives of the corporation, i.e. building the product to support the bottom line.
Two common threads across companies doing agile - Yvonne Lam, 8 April 2022
https://twitter.com/yvonnezlam/status/1512209492267581445
I’m only a practitioner of agile in the sense that every place I’ve worked for has done some variety of agile. None of them look alike aside from using similar software tools and not wanting to deal with feedback loops.
Participative Design for Participative Democracy - Trond Hjorteland, 31 May 2022
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/participative-design-democracy-trond-hjorteland/
Trond Hjorteland explains that Agile was in many ways originally a democratisation movement, where the developers self-organised in teams and took charge of more of the development process. He then argues that a full participative democratisation, i.e. including the design and construction of the organization, is needed for Agile to truly shine.
Agile Maxims - Woody Zuill, 13 August 2022
https://twitter.com/WoodyZuill/status/1558480405258309632
Woody Zuill’s eight Agile Maxims
Agile is a disaster today! - Tom Gilb, 1 September 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKTwsl7oD7U
In this short video Tom Gilb says that agile has fallen into disrepute and is performing only slightly better than waterfall. Even worse, we’ve accepted this as normal. His solution is to study successful projects and then do projects more like that.
A Patchwork of Contradictions and Confusions: Inside the Software Industry - Merrelyn Emery, January 2023
https://www.socialsciencethatactuallyworks.com/_files/ugd/d59011_f069e39dfe3a4fe6b867244880c2ba29.pdf
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/agile-working-industry-patchwork-contradictions-trond-hjorteland (article by Trond Hjorteland, 31 March 2023)
https://podcast.oddly-influenced.dev/episodes/trond-hjorteland-on-a-radical-approach-to-organizational-transformation (podcast interview with Trond Hjorteland, 10 April 2023)
Study using as its framework open systems theory (OST) to research what is going on inside the software industry. Its conclusion is that the software industry is a conglomeration of strange combinations of high and low supervision, coordination and control. These uneasy combinations have, therefore, generally not produced well functioning organization either at the operator or managerial levels. After over 20 years of agile, this study shows that agile has failed to produce a coherent industry or sustainable organizations.
Agile’s Great Schism - Joe Fecarotta, 22 February 2024
http://virtualagilecoach.com/agiles-great-schism
Joe Fecarotta argues that we’ve lost our common story and beliefs as the agile community grew larger larger. We need to find new ways to align across the agile world.
Agile As a Micromanagement Tool - Murat Guller, 24 January 2024
https://muromuro.substack.com/p/agile-as-a-micromanagement-tool
Murat Guller argues that Agile seems to devolve into a micromanagement tool, especially under clueless management who don’t have any proper technical background. Also, Agile’s championing of the constant intermingling between business and engineering people usually results in the business people dominating the engineering folks. He concluded by saying that the best software organizations are those that implement just the essential development processes, and nothing more.
Beyond Agile - Murat Guller, 20 March 2024
https://muromuro.substack.com/p/beyond-agile
As a follow-up to his “Agile As a Micromanagement Tool” Murat Guller summarizes how we can improve upon the Agile methodology and develop software in a better way. In his opinion all you need is a lightweight incremental/iterative Development process.
Random musings on the Agile Manifesto - Dave Nicolette, 8 April 2024
https://neopragma.com/2024/04/random-musings-on-the-agile-manifesto/
Dave Nicolette reflects on how the Manifesto was written by middle-class white males raised in a West European or North American (i.e. indivdualistic) cultural context. Due to that context there was a need to write a Manifesto that comes down to that “people ought to work in a way that is natural for human beings.” He also says that a few of the authors of the Manifesto have made themselves into hero-gods of Agile, behaving inconsistently with the values and principles they wrote into the Agile Manifesto.
New manifesto for software developers - Einar W. Høst, 5 August 2025
https://mastodon.social/@einarwh/114977205270770133
“New manifesto for software developers: VALUING THINGS ON THE LEFT MORE over VALUING THINGS ON THE RIGHT MORE. …that is, while there is value in valuing things on the right more, we value valuing things on the left more more.”
Methodologies
By authors of the manifesto
- Adaptive Software Development
- Crystal
- Extreme Programming (XP)
- Pragmatic Programming (PP)
- Scrum
Represented by at least one of the Manifesto-authors
- Adaptive Software Development
- Crystal
- Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM)
- Extreme Programming (XP)
- Pragmatic Programming (PP)
- Scrum
Other methodologies
- Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM)
- FAST Agile
- Feature-Driven Development
- Internet-speeddevelopment (ISD)
- Kanban
- Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS)
- Lean Software Development
- Nexus framework
- Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)
- Scrumban
Reframings
Modern Agile
Reframing by Joshua Kerievsky based on four guiding principles:
- Make People Awesome
- Make Safety a Prerequisite
- Experiment & Learn Rapidly
- Deliver Value Continuously
Heart of Agile
Reframing by Alistair Cockburn based on four imperatives:
- Collaborate: increase the quality of listening
- Deliver: small & soon
- Reflect: pause; check data & emotions
- Improve: small changes
After Agile
Lean (in software development)
The relation between Lean and Agile is more complicated than saying that Lean happened after Agile in software development. It’s presented here as such because Mary and Tom Poppendieck’s “Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit” was published in 2003, so after the Agile Manifesto.
DevOps
Sources
New Directions on Agile Methods: A Comparative Analysis by Pekka Abrahamsson, Juhani Warsta, Mikko T. Siponen and Jussi Ronkainen, 2013 (Abrahamsson 2003)
Extreme Programming Explained, Second Edition by Kent Beck with Cynthia Andres, 2005 (Beck 2005)
Agile Software Development by Alistair Cockburn, 2002 (Cockburn 2002)
Crystal Clear: A Human-Powered Methodology for Small Teams by Alistair Cockburn, 2005 (Cockburn 2005)
Adaptive Software Development: A Collaborative Approach to Managing Complex Systems by Jim Highsmith, 2000 (Highsmith 2000)
https://agilemanifesto.org/history.html, 2001 (Highsmith 2001)
Agile Software Development Systems by Jom Highsmith, 2002 (Highsmith 2002)
Wild West to Agile: Adventures in Software Development Evolution and Revolution by Jim Highsmith, 2023 (Highsmith 2023)
Agile Development with Scrum by Ken Schwaber, Mike Beedle, 2002 (Schwaber 2002)
The Art of Agile Development (2nd Edition) by James Shore, 2022 (Shore 2022)
Scrum, The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland, 2014 (Sutherland 2014)
Agile Impressions, Gerald M. Weinberg, 2017 (Weinberg 2017)
http://www.extremeprogramming.org/, 1999 (Wells 1999)