Agile Manifesto -- Some 16 years later

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"In 2001, 17 individuals gathered in the Wasatch mountains of Utah to find common ground around Agile. After much skiing, talking, relaxing, and eating, they arrived at four common values that led to the development of the Agile Manifesto."[source] [Wikipedia]

 Going to AgileManifecto.org, we see just 14 people listed, what appears to be their feeling on what promised so much hope some 15 years ago.

  1. Mike Beedle 
  2. Arie van Bennekum
  3. Alistair Cockburn
    1. " “Agile has become overly decorated. Let’s scrape away those decorations for a minute, and get back to the center of agile. The center of agile is … ” [2015]
  4. Ward Cunningham
    1. " "I have seen my ideas diluted as they diffused through the industry". You said "I’d much rather move to the next idea than struggle to keep the last idea pure." [2011]
  5. Martin Fowler
  6. Jim Highsmith - 
    1. Don’t “Control” Agile Projects
    2. Agile Bureaucracy: When Practices become Principles
  7. Andrew Hunt The Failure of Agile (2015)
  8. Ron Jeffries
    1. Do you want Crappy Agile? [2016] " it encourages you to track “metrics”. Do you want Crappy Agile? That’s how you get Crappy Agile, at least far too often."
    2. "Scrum is good, when done as intended. Otherwise it can be oppressive and dangerous to developers. Let's study: Defense Against the Dark Arts of Scrum." Dark Scrum
  9. Jon Kern
    1. "The only thing that has me mildly torn--and only mildly, because "to each his own" and "what-evs" come to mind--is the craze surrounding Scrum. Scrum, scrum, scrum, scrum. Part of me is happy that there are legions out there turning the sod under, trying to sow the agile seeds via Scrum. Another part of me thinks it is like Corn-to-Ethanol. A waste of energy for the dumbfounded among us, spurred on by lots of lobbying." [2011]
    2. Have not posted on his blog about agile since 2011
  10. Brian Marick "In his keynote at the Agile Development Practices conference, Brian Marick described values missing from the Agile Manifesto. His view is that the Manifesto was essentially a marketing document, aimed at getting business to give agile a chance." [2008]
    1. "As Agile moves into bigger companies and into less adventurous ones, those undocumented values are getting watered down. If that continues, I’m afraid Agile will be this decade’s fad that changes nothing."
  11. Robert C. Martin (aka Uncle Bob) moved on to "Clean Code" 
  12. Ken Schwaber owns Scrum.org
  13. Jeff Sutherland CEO of Scrum Inc
  14. Dave Thomas 

    Agile is Dead (Long Live Agility) - PragDave

Missing are: [source]

Question - Agile is good if selling it is your bread and butter

Many agile signatures appear to have become disillusioned by how Agile is commonly being adapted in the industry. Some people have stopped writing and posting on it. Others have proposed derivatives of it in the hope of getting back to core values. Others are making a good living from preaching the gospel of agile.

My view?  Simple, I started using RAD back in 1979 and been using the concepts (without the dogma) for the last 37 years.  The best implementation have been where the product owner/customer was very technical and detail orientated and put in the needed hours. The worst cases were scrum was magically expected to make management easy and not require their heavy engagement or hours  with the products they owned or manage.

I like the concepts and practice them instinctively, I hate the "rote-application of the manifesto" 

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