Co-author of the Agile Manifesto, created Heart of Agile. Creatively showing a humane way forward since the 1990s.
response to a question on my quote "We wrote the manifesto to avoid the codification of practices": hi, thanks - i gave it in my reply to Henrik in that subthread https://lnkd.in/e6nujs-v another way to say, my preferred way: we all agreed to disagree at the level of daily explicit recommendations: Steven Mellor loved to model, Kent Beck hated to model; I liked deliveries every 2 months (back then), Ward Cunningham liked deliveries every week or two, etc. so how to find a common place? : "Surely there is a description that allows us to agree on the general direction and disagree on daily actions?" the answer lies in "levels of precision", like pi is roughly 3 at the first level of precision, good enough to indicate it isn't 10,000; then at the second level of precision you can get away with 22/7 for some calculations, but need a third or fourth level of precision, like who knows, 20 decimal places for some calculations. so: at the first, roughest level of precision, we have one one word: "Agile". Just one word, but it indicates something, a general difference (I do like "Adaptive" as contrasted with "Predictive", as making a direction clearer, but that really also comes at some 2nd level of precision, when we get talking about details). We could all agree we wanted agility, no rigidity. Level 1 Level 2: we found those values, and put the "over" to indicate the opposite direction. Values are directions. Unanimous agreement at level 2. No practices anywhere in sight, just value centers. Level 3: we named 12 principles, started having a few disagreements. Still no practices. after that we knew we would not agree completely, nor did we want to . Practices are down at level 4 or 5, things that change from project to project and person to person. Practices vary all the time, values are steady (and note the last sentence in the values page, where we said the items on the right are appropriate sometimes). I hope that answers your question
Co-author of the Agile Manifesto, created Heart of Agile. Creatively showing a humane way forward since the 1990s.
look what I just found! :))
Great history and great example of how to narrow differences and come to consensus. Not just a compromise but a consensus to meet a challenge
Thanks for sharing this. I feel like it may come in handy for future conversations. I think defining principles and making it clear that people have to use their own judgement about how and when to apply them is really the only way of identifying what are ostensible the "right things". The fact that organizations wanted to be told how and a market formed to meet that demand is hardly the fault of the people who wrote the manifesto. It's an important clarification though that there is no consensus in terms of what constitutes an Agile practice.
Imposing practices to be applied in every context breaks the first level; it leads to rigidity and a lack of adaptability.
Good intentions at the start 👌 But things then take a life of their own. Agile is a big business now and you can't sell people the same old wine, they want something new and exciting. Let's go back to basics where the essential wisdom lies.
The problem is that many claims those 12 principles can be cherry picked! Leave enough out and wave goodbye to agility...
And to that end, you selected your words carefully. For example, "...better ways of developing software..." not the best way or the only way. Words matter!
Imagine making the claim that both sides of a dichotomy are true in some sense. The joy and humanity of that one! The more I have worked with people and software, the more I've come to appreciate that particular aspect of this manifesto. It's Art for a sometimes very Art-less people. Props to the creators, sincerely. Says here you are one of those. Oh, heeey!
Associate Director - Sustainable Enterprise Agility & Elevation Infosys Finacle
2moWell formed approach reminds me of https://youtu.be/hRAFPdDppzs?si=QEeu7mtDx9XVFLKQ