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Agile isn't dead, but it is widely misunderstood and more unusual than most people think.
a #Thread
1/12
a #Thread
1/12
I have spent the vast majority of my career working in what today we'd call 'agile' teams and organisations, but I hadn't heard the term until 20 odd years ago.
2/12
2/12
'Agile', with a capital 'A', has become the commonest form of SW dev, but it isn't 'agile' in the sense of the agile manifesto, it does not, as @pragdave says promote 'agility'
agilemanifesto.org
3/12
agilemanifesto.org
3/12
I believe that true agile development is important though, in that it is an informal adoption of some deeply important ideas, that are really at their roots the same ideas that are at the roots of science,
"Try something, see if it works, and react to what you learn."
4/12
"Try something, see if it works, and react to what you learn."
4/12
I don't understand anyone who can argue against that idea. But to be fair, that is not what most people's experience of 'Agile' is.
5/12
5/12
"Trying stuff to see what works" has nothing to do with standing up during meetings, calling your
release-waterfall a train or expecting people to become "masters" at anything after 2 days in a class room.
6/12
release-waterfall a train or expecting people to become "masters" at anything after 2 days in a class room.
6/12
If you work on an "agile team" and it is not working well, then to be agile in any real sense of the word, YOU MUST CHANGE IT, otherwise you aren't being agile at all.
7/12
7/12
I think that part of the slide into the failures of the ever popular water-scrummer-fall has been the focus on project management rather than on engineering.
8/12
8/12
People not familiar with what it takes to do engineering co-opted "let's try stuff and see what works" into "We need you to commit to your delivery promises" not a very subtle change really.
9/12
9/12
Fundamentally, I don't care too much about the labels, they do, and will, come and go. 'Agile' as a label has lasted a long time, and maybe it's time is up, as a useful term.
10/12
10/12
but the idea of "Try something, ideally in small controlled steps, and adapt to what you learn" is not going away. In fact that is the only way that people have ever solved hard problems. In other disciplines, we call that approach "Science" or "Engineering".
11/12
11/12
My preferred 'engineering approach' to agility is #ContinuousDelivery checkout my new, free, introductory training course to see what I mean.
12/12
courses.cd.training/courses/cd-fun…
12/12
courses.cd.training/courses/cd-fun…
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