After I started my series of blog posts on Agile and it’s need in the current software development ecosystem I started receiving a lot of emails and comments saying what you are talking about isn’t new, we have been ‘following’ agile for a long time… etc etc. Well, I’m not sure what the argument is for or what it proves, but yes Agile is not new. All of us have been following one Agile principle or the other in our day to day work. Be it daily communication with a client or a ‘project postmortem’ or iterative/phased development. But following one agile principle or practice is not equivalent to following agile. Agile is so much more than just daily stand ups and continuous iterations.
If you wear a helmet, a fire-proof jacket, gloves, racing suit and ride around the city on a donkey cart, it would not make you a formula1 driver. You still need a sports car to go with your gear!
Scrum, DSDM, RAD, Crystal, FDD, XP have all be around for over a decade, but it was the masters the gurus of light-weight development methodologies themselves who joined heads and came up with, what is now called “the Agile Manifesto” which talks about the very principles on which software development ‘should’ be done.
Here’s a very interesting story of how agile manifesto came into existence.
On February 11-13, 2001, at The Lodge at Snowbird ski resort in the Wasatch mountains of Utah, seventeen people met to talk, ski, relax, and try to find common ground and of course, to eat. What emerged was the Agile Software Development Manifesto. Representatives from Extreme Programming, SCRUM, DSDM, Adaptive Software Development, Crystal, Feature-Driven Development, Pragmatic Programming, and others sympathetic to the need for an alternative to documentation driven, heavyweight software development processes convened.
What emerged from this meeting was symbolic, a Manifesto for Agile Software Development signed by all participants. The only concern with the term agile came from Martin Fowler (a Brit for those who don’t know him) who allowed that most Americans didn’t know how to pronounce the word “agile”. *hehehe* which is so true!
Alistair Cockburn’s initial concerns reflected the early thoughts of many participants. “I personally didn’t expect that this particular group of agilites to ever agree on anything substantive.” But his post-meeting feelings were also shared, “Speaking for myself, I am delighted by the final phrasing [of the Manifesto]. I was surprised that the others appeared equally delighted by the final phrasing. So we did agree on something substantive.”
But while the Manifesto provides some specific ideas, there is a deeper theme that drives many, but not all, to be sure, members of the alliance.
Kent Beck tells the story of an early job in which he estimated a programming effort of six weeks for two people. After his manager reassigned the other programmer at the beginning of the project, he completed the project in twelve weeks and felt terrible about himself! The boss of course harangued Kent about how slow he was throughout the second six weeks. Kent, somewhat despondent because he was such a “failure” as a programmer, finally realized that his original estimate of 6 weeks was extremely accurate for 2 people and that his “failure” was really the manager’s failure , indeed, the failure of the standard “fixed” process mindset that so frequently plagues our industry.
In order to succeed in the new economy, to move aggressively into the era of e-business, e-commerce, and the web, companies have to rid themselves of their Dilbert manifestations of make-work and arcane policies. This freedom from the inanities of corporate life attracts proponents of Agile Methodologies, and scares the crap out of traditionalists 
. Quite frankly, the Agile approaches scare corporate bureaucrats at least those that are happy pushing process for process sake versus trying to do the best for the “customer” and deliver something timely and tangible and “as promised” because they run out of places to hide.
In the end I would like to say, don’t shun this ideology just because it isn’t what you were taught at school or because it isn’t what you read in “Roger Pressman”. Try to look beyond processes and look what principles and values agile tries to inculcate. It would start to make sense.
My two cents worth!
Nice article, especially the one, you still need the sport car along with your gear
. The problem here in pakistan is that everyone is excited and energetic at the start, but to me they don’t even have full gears to begin with let leave alone the sport car. We should adopt this methology but making sure to take small simple and basic steps and dont rush into it. I have seen it and may regard it has failed because of it !!!