Agile Manifesto

Source: http://agilemanifesto.org

This is where it all started, on February 11-13, 2001, at the lodge at Snowbird ski resort in the Wasatch mountains of Utah. The original signers met to talk, ski, relax, and try to find common ground. These are the original seventeen:

• Kent Beck
• Mike Beedle
• Arie van Bennekum
• Alistair Cockburn
• Ward Cunningham
• Martin Fowler
• James Grenning
• Jim Highsmith
• Andrew Hunt
• Ron Jeffries
• Jon Kern
• Brian Marick
• Robert C. Martin
• Steve Mellor
• Ken Schwaber
• Jeff Sutherland
• Dave Thomas

The result wasn't a scathing attack on business-as-usual, nor a rubber-stamp for the eXtreme Programming or Scrum. It was a simple statement of values. The statement of values is important because the practices without the values are empty.

These values are pragmatic and practical, arising from many combined decades of actual software practice. The preamble (not quoted on the card) says:

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it.

If a company is devoted to following a plan, fighting changes to scope or priority, purchasing expensive and opinionated tools, following a rigid process, and producing copious documentation then that company certainly may continue to do so. It may even be successful. But it will not be agile. In fact, such a company should not waste time and money attempting to adopt an agile process. Agile is for companies devoted to simplicity, iterative development, time-to-market, and quality.

Failing to adopt the values is the first and greatest failure mode.