Agile Development Blog

I was fortunate and honored to be able to attend the 10 year Agile celebration in Snowbird, UT on February 11th and 12th.   The 2-day meeting in Snowbird had four very positive attributes that allowed the 33 participants to produce a solid retrospective on the last 10 years.

Group busy in Snowbird, UT 2011

It was:

• Thoughtful
• Diversified
• Well-facilitated
• Collaborative

As a result, it was a very satisfying event because of the energy that Alistair put into it and the facilitation by Janet and Bob from Coach4hire.  The event met all of Alistair’s objectives and everyone seemed to have fun.  What more can you ask?

Maybe you want to know what came out? As a celebration and retrospective, we did a very good job of appreciating the positive things of the past 10-years and reflecting on the puzzles and issues.

We agreed that we achieved the following things in the last 10 years:

What we did not do was make a plan.  A small group did spend time discussing ways the Agile Alliance could evolve to support our maturing and growing community.  As we were all from diverse companies and background, we were not in a place to really make a plan.  Rachel Davies, Todd Little and I shared context from having been on the Agile Alliance board.  And, Todd Little is taking many of the recommendations back to the Agile Alliance’s next board meeting in Stockholm.  I have hopes to see some of these ideas surface at Agile 2011 that will be back in Utah in August.

If you are really interested in the events of the weekend, I would encourage you to read these posts and others that will surely emerge during the remainder of the week:

• 10 Years Agile Web Site – with background leading up the event – results will be publish here in future
• Summary of the Twitter Traffic on #10yrsagile – big spike of traffic over the Snowbird weekend
• Dennis Stephen’s Summary of the process we used and the next steps we see
• David Anderson’s thoughtful reflections on what the event means
• Philippe Kruchten’s – summary of the sacred cows that need to be discussed
• Mike Hugo’s – Advice.CIO.com First Article on the Conference – “Business Analysts versus Business Designers”
• Johnathan House’s - My “Ahas” from 10 Years Agile

There were four summary statements that the group developed with regards to what we, the industry, need to do in the next 10 years of Agile.  Please know that the group does not see the high value in these summary statements, but in the details that are below these categories.

• Demand Technical Excellence
• Promote Individual Change and Lead Organizational Change
• Organize Knowledge and Improve Education
• Maximize Value Creation Across the Entire Process

At Rally, we are planning on being here for the next 10 years even as the industry moves from revolution to evolution:

“The mission now is incremental improvement. It’s evolution, education and improving levels of maturity, rather than a revolution. The enemy is now within. The enemy is as Joshua Kerievsky put it “all the crap I see out there” despite 10 years of Agile methods.” – From David Andersen’s post

10 Years ago as the Agile Manifesto was being crafted in Snowbird, UT, I was working at BEA Systems on E-commerce product and its web services strategy.  Agile has had a big impact on my past including the Global Village team in 1995, operating Avitek in the late 1990′s and through the first four releases of BEA’s Ecommerce solutions in 2000.  I had read Kent Beck’s white book, but I did not notice the Snowbird event in 2001.  It was not until I had left BEA in late 2001, that I noticed the snowball forming.  I am very happy to have been personally and professionally part of helping this critical industry scale the benefits of software agility.

I feel like I owe a big Thank You to the whole community, we really made progress and it has been a great last 10 years.  Now, I am really looking forward to the next 10 years where we are able to use these attitudes, beliefs, skills, capabilities, awareness, and sensibilities to work with with some of societies most complex difficulties.

Ryan Martens is a member of NRDC’s Environmental Entrepreneurs,  founder/CEO of the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado, and Founder/CTO at Rally Software Development.

After reading the Manifesto for Agile Software Development in January of 2002, Rally really took shape. I am proud of my involvement in the software industry for the last 25 years, but the last 10 have been fantastic thanks to the group pictured below, who came together in February 2001 in Snowbird, UT.

A ten year mark is the perfect time to stop and reflect and the 10-Year Manifesto anniversary is no different.  In this spirit, Dr. Alistair Cockburn, one of the original Manifesto authors, is hosting an open discussion on February 12 with a group of 35 individuals from varied backgrounds in our industry. I am proud to attend and we are proud to be a sponsor of this event.  I look forward to joining in the reflection, discussion and celebration with other attendees at the Snowbird resort. (With these recent storms, the 100+ inches of base and 14″ of fresh snow should make for a great weekend.)

The event theme is “Solved, Solvable, Unsolvable Problems.”  As participants we’ve been challenged to consider the following three questions:

1. What problems in software or product development have we solved (and therefore should not simply keep re-solving)?
2. What problems are fundamentally unsolvable (so therefore we should not keep trying to “solve” them)?
3. What problems can we sensibly address – problems that we can mitigate either with money, effort or innovation? (and therefore, these are the problems we should set our attention to, next.)

What do you think?  What are your answers? What other questions should we be asking of each other? The Agile community needs to be an active part of the anniversary celebration and the conversation it creates. Please take a moment to stop, reflect and make your own contribution to this event. Visit the ‘10-Years of the Agile Manifesto‘ website to join the dialog. You can also post your photos of agile development from the last decade to the event’s Flickr group. Follow and contribute to the discussion on Twitter using the hashtag: #10yrsagile. And, share your thoughts with us in the comments below.

The Agile Manifesto 10th anniversary will continue at the Agile 2011 Conference scheduled for August 7 – 13 in Salt Lake City. Agile 2011 will provide another opportunity for the Agile community to reflect on the Agile Manifesto and how it contributed to software development over the last decade.

Saturday’s Snowbird event marks an amazing 10 years in the software development industry. This is a great opportunity to think about how far we’ve come and what we can accomplish in the next 10 years. What’s on your roadmap for 2021?

Ryan Martens is an active snow shoveler, skier dreaming of skiing at Snowbird this weekend, and CTO at Rally Software Development.

Right now, I’m watching a company try to improve itself.

It seems that management has recently learned that there is a thing called Lean, which even comes with some cookbook recipes called practices that you can do. There is lots of nifty new lingo, and it’s complex enough that you can interpret it nearly any way you choose

ShuHaRi - stages of learning that lead to mastery

This company has reason to believe that they have some understanding of this new animal because they feel that they’re already Agile, but as far as I’ve been able to determine there is nobody involved who has, lets say, an actual resume chock full of actual training and experience in Lean. The employees are pro Lean because (a) they always validate what management wants, (b) they want it, too, and (c) they think they understand it.

And I find myself thinking, “This is not right. You are doing these practices in ways that I have never seen discussed in any of the books or courses with which I am familiar, and I have put in some time studying this stuff. You are tossing ideas around like you really understand them, and I do not think that you do. Worse, you’re starting out with complex new ways of doing it rather than start at the rock bottom with the basics. This is bad!”

Then I have an opposite thought, which is something like, “Hey. What are they supposed to do, sit around reading books for five years before they try something? That’s just another form of analysis paralysis. Go for it!”

Then my coach brain kicks in (by now I can feel my brain cell overheating, but I persevere), asking me -  How may DIY (Do-It-Yourself) Agile implementations have you seen? (Answer: A lot) How many had great results? (Answer: Few) How many sucked? (Answer: Most) I am suspicious of DIY Agile and DIY Lean because I have seen too much badness there.

Enter Shu, Ha, Ri – a concept first introduced to the Agile world by Alistair Cockburn. The phrase is used to describe the three stages one goes through when pursuing the mastery of a complex art.

Shu, the beginner stage, is where you know nothing and you limit yourself to a rote application of very simple practices.

Eventually you reach the Ha stage, where you can stop concentrating on the simple application of techniques and graduate to the skillful execution of complex techniques that follow the known rules of your discipline while handling exceptions and even new situations.

Then, and only then, can you aspire to Ri, which is where you forget everything you know because you are beyond thinking about it. Here you transcend rules and blend techniques in artful and unpredictable, yet “correct” ways. (For me, this is the stage where “you can do it drunk”, though others may choose to describe it differently).

So returning to our story – here is the behavior I’d like to see from this company.

I want the company to reach and stretch, but I also want them to do it right. I want them to have a realistic understanding of who they are, and at the same time, not allow that understanding to deter or slow them down. How would that be possible? There’s only one answer that I can get to, and it is that you have to both act and study if you’re going to do either one effectively. Go ahead and leap right in, grab the marmoset by the tail and go for it, just don’t forget to do your homework too.

If I could talk to the management of that company, I’d urge them to get expert training for their people and to slowly, methodically, and gently yet firmly allow the company to move in the new direction. And I’d want them to make sure they are getting it right. It’s too easy to make this stuff up, and it’s too easy to bulldoze employees into following you down a path. Who’s going to argue with the CTO or the CIO or the CEO? Not many people will do that.

So I say, be humble. Bring in the consultants. Get the training. Keep trying new things. Be open to failure and to admitting wrong-headedness. You’ll make it. Just be balanced in the learning and the doing.

That’s what I think, anyway.

About the Author: Alan Atlas is a Musician, Certified Scrum Trainer, and Agile Coach at Rally Software Development. Subscribe today to get free updates by email or RSS.