Monday, September 5, 2016

The Beauty and Necessity of The Agile Manifesto

Of all the documentation I've read on agile, the one thing I keep referring to in conversation is the Agile Manifesto. For reference, here it is:
We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.

Whenever I'm pulled into meetings to discuss the agile process, I think of this manifesto. Whenever someone asks me about how we are collaborating with business, I think of this manifesto. Whenever the very question of agile comes up, I think of this manifesto.

I even have the manifesto printed out and stuck to my desk!

The beauty of the manifesto is how much it says in so few words. The terms are broad enough such that they don't get bogged down in any particular aspect of the SDLC. Yet the terms are also targeted enough that they hit the relevant factors associated with software development.

Furthermore, they are a statement of intent - of what a software developer ought to strive for. The goal is working software, and to get that requires interaction, collaboration, and responding to change.

Those things on the right too often get in the way of creating working software. We've all been in projects where managers put pressure on the team because it deviates off their unrealistic "plan". That bad ideas get coded in because the phase to negotiate that was before coding began. That a effort is put into elaborate documentation that goes out of date the moment a system enhances it.

Even when going agile, the agile manifesto works to dampen the tendency to think any problem can be solved with more process. It can stop those in-grained waterfall tendencies from answering the inevitable "now what?" question.

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