Agile Is Dead (Long Live Agility)

Dave Thomas says the word “agile” has lost its meaning after being turned into a marketing label and a noun, especially in consulting and vendor culture. He keeps the manifesto’s values and practices, but argues that the useful idea is agility, not the brand name.

Reading notes

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• The manifesto began as a short list of values and practices among seventeen people at Snowbird.
• He believes the manifesto helped developers escape wasteful practices from the 1980s and 1990s.
• He did not join Agile events, the Agile Alliance, or agile consulting because he felt those activities did not match the manifesto’s spirit.
• He compares conferences about agility to conferences about ballet dancing.
• He says the word “agile” has been subverted until it is almost meaningless.
• He objects to using “agile” as a noun, because it should describe something else.
• He says consultants and vendors turned “agile” into a marketing term to sell services and products.
• He thinks this harms developers because they can no longer use the word as a guide to useful practice.
• He restates the four values as ideals that favor the left side over the right side.
• He suggests consultants often emphasize process, tools, documents, and planning more than the manifesto does.
• His agile method is to find where you are, take a small step, adjust your understanding, and repeat.
• He defines the practice as choosing the path that makes future change easier when two options deliver similar value.
• He says anything more complicated is usually an attempt to sell something.
• He proposes abandoning “agile” in favor of “agility.”
• He gives examples: a programmer works with agility, a team exhibits agility, and tools can enhance agility.
• He says labels can be bought, but experience has to be earned.
• He wants to protect the word “agility” from being sold back to developers in emptied-out form.