Crumbling Cathedral?
So apparently, people at ThoughtWorks, arguably the leading Agile consultancy in the industry, are starting to question and debate what “Agile” is and whether or not the whole term needs to be abandoned. I posted about Jim Webber’s post the other day in which he declared himself an ‘Agile atheist’. For a good run down on the ensuing discussion check out this blog post.
What I find most interesting is the different perspectives people have on what “Agile” is. Some people feel “Agile” is rife with dogma and religiosity. Others apparently think everything is fine and haven’t experienced the dogma.
In a comment to Jim’s post, Jeff Santini (another ThougthWorker) says:
You said you are not Agile because you don’t believe in it’s religion and you don’t accept its dogma. Yet I AM Agile and I also don’t believe in its religion nor do I accept its dogma. As a matter of fact I don’t have any idea what its religion or dogma are.
That last sentence just baffles my mind. It is one thing not to have experience the dogma, but to deny its existence is … I actually can’t think of an adjective here. Even if you are a strong believer in “Agile” and the practices that some people say you must be doing in order to be “Agile”, I can’t see how you can deny the existence of some force in the industry trying to push “Agile” methodology as the one true way to develop software. Perhaps we can debate the size of that force (I personally think it is huge) but to deny the existence of “Agile” dogma, one must have been seriously not paying attention to what is going on for the last couple of years.
Later in her post Deborah describes exactly what the “Agile religion” is, although still not committing to its existence.
If Agile religion exists, it seems to consist of a focus on strict adherence to practices without a need for understanding, combined with judgmental criticism of others - clearly ignoring the spirit of the Agile Manifesto’s “people over process,” values-driven approach.
That’s pretty much the whole issue in a nutshell and the entire reason for pliantalliance.org’s existence.
If nothing else I guess the mothership is at least starting to think about what people like Jonathan and myself have been saying for the better part of the last year. I’d call that progress.
on December 8th, 2006 at 4:59 am
My point in the comment above is that any force that tries to push dogma is not Agile. It may use the word, but it has nothing to do with any Agile practices I have been associated with. And I do not understand how it can be reconciled with the Agile Manifesto. I certainly agree that it exists, it simply has no place in an Agile conversation except perhaps, how Agile can be misunderstood.
on December 8th, 2006 at 9:20 am
You are right that Agile dogma can not be reconciled with the Agile Manifesto. But it isn’t just the dogma. It is what _some_ people are actually doing and calling it “Agile” that can’t be reconciled with the manifesto either.
If the manifesto is our measuring stick (and I think it should be) than there are tons of people out there who are doing things that don’t measure up but they are calling it “Agile” anyway.
So the issue then becomes what those of us who “get it” are going to do about it. There are two options. One, we can abandon the term. Being a natural pessimist and seeing the giant market forces against me, I chose to abandon the term (or attempt to) and coin a new phrase. The second option (and one I would prefer if we could make it happen) is to take back the word “Agile” and push it back towards the manifesto. Clearly there are enough people out there that understand the Agile manifesto and what it stands for that we should be able to take back the word. However, we failed to hold on to the word in the first place, so I’m not sure we have the power to get it back from the money grubbing methodology marketers that now have control.