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Is the First Agile Manifesto Principle as Easy as It Sounds?
And have you read the Agile manifesto principles?
Hands up how many of us in here work in an Agile team? (All hands go up)
Hands up who has read the Agile Manifesto (Some hands go up)
Hands up who believes that the management and directors of their company have read the Agile Manifesto (No hands go up)
The agile manifesto is not a long read — it is literally a page with a few bullet points on it. Have you read it? Have you understood it? Do you actually adhere to the principles in your day-to-day behaviours?
I think that the processes and principles described in the Agile manifesto are a fantastic way to approach a software project. I also think (sadly) that Agile has failed. Not because it’s a bad idea — quite the opposite. I think that it has failed because, to be blunt, no one has actually bothered to read and understand what is in the Agile Manifesto.
Agile done right can (not will) improve the outlook for a project, depending on the project, the client, the team, and a lot of other ‘stuff’. Good agile is a nudge in the right direction, rather than a panacea that will guarantee your project succeeds. Agile done wrong will (not can) sink your project into an abyss of mismanagement, blown budgets, missed deadlines, and irritated team members!
There are twelve principles listed in the Agile manifesto. Over the next few weeks I’m going to go through them all, one at a time, and try to think about what is required for a team, an individual, or an organization to really live the principles.
In this post, I’ll start with the first — namely:
Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
As with every one of the agile principles, this is intuitively a good idea. “Keep your customers satisfied” has been foundational advice in all businesses for all of the time. Likewise…
