Has the expiry date on Agile just been set?
George Malamidis, June 14th, 2006Having read numerous recent posts on the Blogosphere suggesting potential inadequacies in Agile project management, certain comments from last night’s TW Road Show hosted by Trevor Mather and Roy Singham appear to be fueling the idea that Agile has entered a declining state.
The most obvious – to me – reason for Agile gradually falling short in some projects these days should be the fact that a growing number of companies have adopted Agile, jumping the Agile buzzword wagon mainly targeting increase in sales, without a thorough understanding of the fundamental practices and patterns involved. This results in Agile projects that fail to deliver, unsatisfied customers and ultimately a bad reputation. And let’s face it, business is very much a reputation driven world. Agile is mainly a project management process, so if there aren’t any projects to manage, Agile will have little chances of survival.
It sounds like the next step and natural evolution to Agile, according to last night’s conversations, could be Lean Software Development, as documented in Lean Software Development, the book by Mary and Tom Poppendieck. Lean is not a new concept, as it draws inspiration from systems that have existed for a long time, like the Toyota Production System, Just-In-Time and Lean Manufacturing
According to the authors, the main elements of Lean are: Eliminate Waste, Build Quality In, Create Knowledge, Defer Commitment, Deliver Fast, Respect People and Optimize the Whole.
On a high level, Lean sounds much similar to Agile, maybe a bit more pragmatic and focused, but I need to do some homework, since it is a new concept to me.
The main question is: Do I, as a developer, care? The answer is quite simple, really. As long as I’m allowed to focus on writing better software, I don’t. I like Agile because it lets me pair program and practice TDD, etc, whilst working as a member of focused teams consisting of people whose primary goal is creating great software. Ideally, the project environment will accommodate this, or introduce practices that aim to aid me concentrate on what I like doing. Agile is good at these things, as far as I’m concerned, and if Lean is a step forward from Agile, then bring it on…
Lest we forget, when marketing and buzzwords have all come and gone, great products and services are still the real source of business value.
June 14th, 2006 at 2:17 pm
Bad project management is bad project management. It will not matter what is used or what it is called. Those shops that do good work will continue to do good work. It will not matter what they call their process.
June 14th, 2006 at 2:51 pm
It sounds to me that Lean and Agile is the same exact thing. It’s just the sound that have a different color. So it just adds another buzzword – something that the suits can be excited about while the disappointment of their cargo-cult implementation of agility lingers in the air. That agile methods are on the decline leads my thoughts to the Gardner hype cycle: a new “thing” is first hyped beyond proportions, then fails to deliver anything but disappoint, and finally delivers on its real promises as reality enters the picture. It is quite possible that reality is still a few years out on agile development.
At any rate, agile development is not dead, dying or expirering in my view; it is merely entering a new phase in its life.
June 15th, 2006 at 8:57 am
Agile, to me, means “able to respond to change”. There are other ways of delivering software which work; for instance, a project in which the requirements are clearly set in stone might actually survive the waterfall approach.
Half the problem comes from referring to XP or Scrum as “Agile processes”. They’re not; they’re just great little toolboxes. A hell of a lot more needs to go in to a project to make it work than can be found in XP Explained.
June 15th, 2006 at 10:21 am
[...] « Has the expiry date on Agile just been set? [...]
June 15th, 2006 at 11:46 am
well, the agile manifesto states as its first principle ‘Individuals and interactions over processes and tools’.
its meant to be adaptable. in face an organisation has to adapt any agile methodology to itself.
if that means calling it ‘lean programming’, so be it.
the four points of the manifesto can be read at http://agilemanifesto.org/
June 15th, 2006 at 11:59 am
“Defer Commitment” – That idea will never happen in my shop until the gray hairs retire (10 years). They just cannot get over the idea of not commiting to a final release date up front instead of after a couple of iterations are completed.
June 15th, 2006 at 1:32 pm
Agile and lean aren’t the same, but they do have a lot in common. Lean for instance, has very little to do with customers, and a lot to do with repetitive processes. They do share common roots though, and I’m sure they could (and do) learn from each other.
One of the biggest differences is that Lean originated as a response to manufacturing problems, while Agile comes out of development as a craft approaches to software engineering.
A straight ‘lean software engineering’ project is unlikely to work, just as a straight ‘agile car manufacturing process’ is not going to go very far. But there are good reasons to think that lean could develop into a software methodology and that it would be similar to agile.
June 21st, 2006 at 3:16 am
“Eliminate Waste, Build Quality In, Create Knowledge, etc” are ways to OPTIMIZE your process not to change it.
Lean does not tell you how to deal with the changing world only how to protect yourself from it. It is a set of practices that tell you what to do to avoid failure. In Lean, there’s an implicit belief that by avoiding failure you will succeed.
XP on the other hand tells you how to deal with the changing world and does not address the problem of failure directly. In XP, there’s an implicit belief that by following the best practices you will succeed (and consequently avoid the failure).
Both Lean and XP are inspired by the same Agile philosophy. They are, if you will, both instances of Agile.
I personally prefer to see the world though XP eyes but I acknowledge that there might be easier to follow Lean, especially in environments hostile to changes.
Since Agile describes what works in software development, I don’t think it has any expiry date.
June 21st, 2006 at 4:45 am
Being evolved from Manufacturing side, Lean is process oriented; emphasizes on process cycle efficiency. Agile focusses on individual and interactions while able to respond to changes.
June 21st, 2006 at 9:31 pm
Lean Software Development is just Six Sigma applied to software development.
Analyze and Measure the process. Make a decision to fix (DMAIC) or replace (DMADV). Improve your process. Repeat.
June 22nd, 2006 at 9:33 am
I belive all these processes are more or less same. It’s depends on how best we implement the requirements in a project to deliver good software.
June 23rd, 2006 at 3:41 am
Software projects do not resemble manufacturing process and have lot of process dynamics involved even in same domain.
There needs to be set of core set of lifecyle practices, procedures in an organization and each project depending on its size, nature, circumstances should draw/customize a process from its environment.
I feel there is no magic formula that works for all situation and for all projects and companies.
Project planning and strategy needs to mature higher to custom define process for any initiative. Process/software engineering should mature to provide such assets and environment.
June 28th, 2006 at 10:49 pm
It doesn’t really matter what model is applied, they are all miss used. Very few people I’ve worked with even understand how to go about correctly developing software under a life cycle model, they all turn into cowboys in the end. The other sad thing is everyone only seems to think that the only alternative to Agile it the waterfall model, no one is willing to read on the fundamental models (V, Spiral, etc) and then find what parts will work for them.
July 5th, 2006 at 2:34 pm
I think the talk on process is great, but we are missing the fundamentals, it’s not about Agile, XP, RUP, Scrum, Waterfall.
The essential thing that I can see on this “new” processes is a shift on the focus from technology oriented processes to people oriented processes.
When we put People at the center, not minds or hands alone, we are recognizing what software development is a highly knowledge oriented activity, as far as I know the most adapted tool for transforming, relating and producing new knowledge is People.
All this new processes are more people focused, this gives them the edge, are better aligned with the real needs of a people intensive production system.
In my company balance sheet, I have a column where says “Assets”, there are listed the chairs, computers, tools, etc. that make up the software development department. From this, Industrial age, view of the economics of a company People are expenses not “Assets”.
Anybody with a little more understanding on software development and how it works, can tell that the rigth culture, with the rigth people, that may learn, and adapt its work to the more effective process, and tools and practices, this are the real “Assets”.
What i’m trying to say here is we are experiencing is a paradigm shift, one from the Industrial age to the Knowledge age, wich is creating a lot of conflicts as systems are becoming obsolete, like on the process side upfront vs. more agile, management vs. leadership, etc.
The agile movement is one subset of the bigger scene of changes that we will be experiencing, and this won’t cease, as more and more companies, groups of people, start understanding the fundamentals of this paradigm shift, and embracing it, we will see a massive adoption of more people focused processes and systems, the economics simply will do its job, and maybe yes we will need to wait until some of the grayed guys leave, or until we may influence them, slowly but constantly.
On the end is really about anything that allow us to do be effective on developing software that adds value.
July 15th, 2006 at 12:56 am
Agile and Lean are really quite different paradigms.
Lean empowers survival when resources are scarce; the ascetic who lives by the river and eats mud can obviously get by on very little, however, there may little tangible action to show for this methodolgy, rather it’s the spiritual synergy that empowers this enterprise.
Agile, on the other hand, focuses like a laser beam on constant action-based improvement, while deemphasizing the need to pause and reflect on the consequences of each decision. That’s where the importance of leadership emerges as a disruptive force.
Neither one of these frameworks implies an ability to lift heavy things or actually get anything done.
August 11th, 2006 at 6:53 pm
Focus on people, not process — hmm. Focus on people, not technology — bigger hmm. If we had employed Agile, TDD, blah-blah-blah methods to getting people on the moon, we’d still be iteratively attempting to determine the correct size of the recovery shute . . . Let the VB, App hacking woe-is-me 20 somethings play with Agile and leave the system developers to the engineers.
August 14th, 2006 at 8:57 am
At last another person who is looking at AGILE in a sensible pragmatic way and putting the methid into its proper perspective and place in the tool box. If you talk to the bunch of people above they will tell you that AGILE can just about do anything from IT project to building your house and I am sure next rockets to the moon. You are indeed right AGILE is a REAL Project Managers nightmare especially as Ken Schwaber say’s Project Managers are facilitiers but have responsibility for the project – sounds like being responsbile for speeding fines when someone else is driving your car – Great Job !! Thanks – What TWAT’s going to take on the role of what is essentially team support person. Your not going to get the best and brightest to take up that role. For god sack Project Management is in a sorry enough state as it is with untrained, low integrety and weak project management only to make things worse with AGILE and SCRUM. Your also right about the FEES being the big motivator with all this hype. I really hope that AGILE has reached its expire date !! Please read some of my articles on AGILE :-
AGILE Fees Feeding Frenzy – http://www.claretyconsulting.com/it/comments/agile-fees-feeding-frenzy/2006-07-27/
AGILE Enough is Enough -
http://www.claretyconsulting.com/it/comments/agile-enough-is-enough/2006-06-26/
Before I go I want to say that AGILE is not all bad it is just gone to far and is causing more harm than good from recent troublshooting experience.
August 18th, 2006 at 11:47 am
The pattern you’re seeing as more companies adopt “agile” this-and-that is a familiar one. Seems like every new idea or new technology that comes down the pike goes through the same stages of adoption.
There are enthusiastic early adopters willing to try the New Thing based on what its description appears to promise. If early results are promising, then the adoption rate rises. The so-called “early majority pragmatists” pick up the New Thing on the basis of anecdotal succes stories.
Right about then, vendors, consultants, and pundits start to re-craft their marketing material around the newly popular buzzword. That’s when things start to get confusing. IMO that’s where the industry is right now with respect to “agile”.
Regarding the distinction between agile and lean, I agree with the statement made by commenter “Deb” above. Mechanically or procedurally, agile and lean are largely the same. It’s the relative emphasis on process vs people that makes the difference, and a very subtle difference it may be.