Why Agile?

When The Manifesto for Agile Software Development first was published in 2001, it laid out twelve basic principles for accelerating application development, testing, and maintenance. Above all, Agile development advocated for significantly greater flexibility in meeting customer needs, even if those needs were constantly changing. Since then, Agile methodology has gone mainstream in a big way. It has reshaped the development practices and processes of software development around the world and is responsible for accelerating the pace of fielding software applications that users have come to expect today.

Heidi Araya’s states in her article on Why Agile Works…

Agile is not a rigid process – it is more like tending to a garden.

– Heidi Araya

I agree! Agile is a journey of continuous improvement that looks to increase efficiency through the acceleration of critical planning, design and build processes while transforming the way work gets done. Like tending to a garden.

Requiring certain-sized teams, team structures, or specific workflows and schedules to focus on the methodology as if it should only be practiced in a certain, pre-defined way has become, for some companies, a significant barrier to increasing its agility or adopting the Agile methodology.

Despite its adoption as a best practice within many companies, the Agile methodology is beginning to show signs of calcification and rigidity. For some companies, introducing Agile into the IT organization has become a means to “check the box” to appease senior business or leadership. When this happens, companies often lose sight of the reasons for moving to Agile in the first place. Instead of truly understanding the “why” for doing things differently, they tend to focus on the “how” of Agile, or the mechanics of the methodology. Implementing Agile practices simply for its processes is like sleepwalking through Agile and puts an organization at risk of missing out on many of its benefits.

For a company to see measurable improvements in the way it develops and maintains its applications – it must first understand its own software development processes and practices. Agile practices are not a one-size-fits-all solution. Different companies work in different ways, often defined by company culture, existing processes, and leadership direction. To be as successful as it can be, the Agile framework should align with and leverage these organizational differences.