What Is Agile
As an agile practitioner this is something I get all the time...
But surprisingly so many people, 20 years after the Agile Manifesto still don't understand or get confused, Agile isn't Scrum, Kanban, TDD*, DevOps or even Extreme Programming.
Agile is:
But surprisingly so many people, 20 years after the Agile Manifesto still don't understand or get confused, Agile isn't Scrum, Kanban, TDD*, DevOps or even Extreme Programming.
Agile is:
Uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it
and
Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
While the above methods and frameworks will help you on your "Journey to Agility", they don't represent Agile itself.
*FYI TDD is Test Driven Development
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Continuous Delivery of Valuable Software?
So what does "Continuous Delivery" and "Valuable Software" mean in reality.
To me, this means an End User can do something they couldn't do before that makes their life better, and we keep regularly delivering these improvements in small increments.
By End User, I'm referring to someone the software will be used by as opposed some middle manager, senior user etc, which I see fair too often.
While it's quite hard to define Continuous and Valuable, perhaps defining the anti-patterns that I frequently see, especially in experienced "Agile" teams:
- An End User^ can't utilise the software to achieve business value...
- Software is released every 3 months
- The lead time for a change is in the region of months, or worse years!
- Lead time is defined as the request from an end user to an end user utilising that change
- Delivery of easy, vanity or irrelevant changes that a user isn't actually benefited by
- Users fear new software incase it breaks
This is how we can use the agile methodologies to support and guide our process, but our priority must always be to "satisfy the customer"
Agile Software Development is ultimately a philosophy and mindset than a defined process.
Find more of my Agile Reflections in my World@Hey here
Find more of my thoughts on Agile @ https://blog.apps.martynbristow.co.uk/tag/agile/
Obviously pop over to https://agilemanifesto.org/, even if your familiar its important to remind ourselves what Agile is!
Don't Do Agile... Be Agile!
#agile #scrum #softwaredevelopment