Apparently the word ‘[tag]Agile[/tag]‘ is losing its meaning. It has become a victim of its own success. Over the space of the last 12 months, almost everyone wants to be Agile and therefore everyone claims to be Agile. Hence the supposed meaninglessness of the term. If everyone is Agile, then surely nobody is.
Perhaps at the bottom of all this lies the idea that to move to this new approach, you can simply replace your RUP process documentation with an Agile equivalent. [tag]Process[/tag] is too often considered as an attitude that can be brought to the existing development environment.
But you know what? Agility isn’t a state of mind – it’s a physical state. It’s a coherent state of practices, backed up by the requisite physical infrastructure, and reinforced by constant developer shopfloor education. It takes time, money and commitment to become agile. If the CEO of a software company decides one day that his company is going to be Agile, that doesn’t make it Agile any more than writing “must go to gym more often” in his diary will make him fit.
A predictable response to the precipitous rush to Agility will be the [tag]backlash[/tag] that comes with disappointment – the disappointment that you can’t make your company Agile overnight. If you are going to throw away one way of gathering the information you need to build your customer’s system, you had better be sure that you have another one ready to take its place from the start.
This excellent parody pre-sages this backlash and might find itself mirrored in reality more often in 2007. But we need to remember that the concepts behind Agility are nothing more than a re-balancing within the industry to take into account that coding is also designing. That rebalancing will continue because it has proved its value to those who have truely invested in it, and has given them a competitive edge in terms of giving the customer what they asked for quickly. If in the heat of the battle, the name Agility is lost so be it. If the label Agile becomes meaningless because everyone is (eventually) doing it, then that’s fine too. Just call it Software Engineering.
#1 by Paul Browne - TIPE on January 19, 2007 - 11:41 am
It’s a bit like political manifestos. They all have fluffy words like ‘progress’ , ‘equality’ and ‘growth’. Can you imagine anybody arguing for the opposite of these ?
Same for Agile , who wants to use a ‘Plodding’ , ‘static’ or ‘slow’ development methodology.
Paul , Technology in Plain English
#2 by Brendan Lawlor on January 19, 2007 - 11:55 am
Very true. Using those same political terms, Agile should be considered a reform (certainly not a revolution). Of course reform only means something in the context of an existing problem. Once the problem is more or less dealt with, the word moves on to mean something else.
I’m beginning to read that very interesting document that you re-posted on Agile Project Management. I don’t believe that the Agile reforms are anywhere near finished on Irish software shopfloors, but when they are I suspect that PM will be the next area that will need some reform. I wonder if the A-word has got enough breath in it to serve that purpose?
#3 by Alan Crowley on January 22, 2007 - 1:01 pm
There does seem to be a swarm from the development community jumping onto the ‘Agile’ bandwagon..but is it just ‘the latest fashion’ syndrome. Maybe, maybe not. Either way Brendan, I do agree with your point… Agile is a process, which implies a series of actions to be followed to arrive at the (agile) state that you are aiming for. Simply professing the ‘Agile’ conclusion does not imply that you have gone through the process req
#4 by Alan Crowley on January 22, 2007 - 1:03 pm
There does seem to be a swarm from the development community jumping onto the ‘Agile’ bandwagon..but is it just ‘the latest fashion’ syndrome. Maybe, maybe not. Either way Brendan, I do agree with your point… Agile is a process, which implies a series of actions to be followed to arrive at the (agile) state that you are aiming for. Simply professing to be ‘Agile’ does not prove that you have gone through the process required to arrive at the agile state. From a false premise, one can deduce anything !
#5 by Kerry Buckley on January 27, 2007 - 4:12 pm
I only found out recently that when Kent Beck documented XP, he deliberately chose the name “Extreme Programming” to be unappealing to jargon-junkie managers. People have often commented that the image of XP has prevented its wide adoption, but given the uninformed bandwagon-jumping we’re now seeing with agile, I suspect it was a good idea.
I’m not sure it’s a process, so much as a philosophy. Once you treat it as a process, people think they can just follow an instruction manual by rote and become agile.
#6 by Lal on March 25, 2007 - 6:28 am
Agile as a term gets confused with all the hype and the other buzzwords that float around – XP, Extreme etc…
It has plenty of merits but don’t be fooled into thinking it doesn’t have its downsides as well.
Garbage in, Garbage out…
Lal
#7 by Lal on March 25, 2007 - 8:40 pm
Having been around lots of different ‘methodologies’ b4 the Agile “religion” has some valid grounding and is the latest craze.
Like a lot of these its got pro’s/con’s and different implementations and ‘options’ depending on whose mantra/book u follow.
Sometimes not being a total convert helps and ensuring you follow common-sense guidelines often makes the different (than following step by step religiously!)
Most of the benefit is how u can apply it 2 your staff based on their skills (and yours – not just on the technology side but also on process, managing etc..)
And as Andy indicated just saying “We’re Agile” means diddly sqwat (seen enough of those so called implementations – as 2b honest their current usage of Agile is as much benefit as the methodology they had b4 – aka useless!)
PS your captcha graphic is failing 2 show in Opera (never had this issue b4 on any other WP site?)
Lal