Let’s go for half-assed Agile!
A colleague pointed met to the Half Arsed Agile Manifesto this week. According to the footer, it was cobbled together by Kerry Buckley one Sunday morning before breakfast. It’s funny. Something that is probably born out of frustration with how Agile was implemented in an organization. A reflection on how the basic principles of Agile were ignored and how the organization was not doing Agile very well. I have been there. But now I am somewhere else. “Doing Agile” very well is never the goal. The goal is to create kick-ass software products that make the world a better place and deliver business value as a side product in a way that is empowering people to be their most creative. And in some (most?) cases that means not fully complying to the Agile Manifesto.
“The goal is to create kick-ass software products that make the world a better place and deliver business value as a side product in a way that is empowering people to be their most creative.”
I found that a lot of Agile Evangelists do not read this little line underneath the four values: “That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.” They have a tendency to only value the items on the left and detest the values on the right. They want no process, no tools, no documentation, no contract negotiation, no plan. But that is not what the Agile Manifesto says.
The Agile Manifesto described a balance: both are important but we have come to value the things on the left more. Probably because the things on the right are traditionally valued more in most companies. The Agile Manifesto is an attempt to create a new balance by stating the value of the things on the left. The Agile Manifest has always been a call for half-assed Agile because we cannot forget the things on the right. And the goal has never been to fully comply to the things on the left.
What Kerry did with his Half-Arsed Agile Manifesto is change the intro and the text underneath. The intro is a critique on consultancy agencies making money off of the Agile hype to sell services. Consultancies are know to sell fried air from time to time to make a buck. And it is very good to be critical about that. The text underneath is actually a valid concern of the organizations that are implementing some form or Agile way of working. There is also value in the items on the right. Most organizations today are open to the value that Agile ways of working bring but they are also right in not throwing everything overboard to fully move to the items on the left. That is just bad business.
What we need to do is end up in the middle, find balance between the items on the left and the items on the right. That is half-arsed if you only value the items on the left. I would call it balance, the best of both worlds. So what we need is a Balanced Agile Manifesto:
One could call that half-assed. But no matter what we call it, let’s go for this because that is the way forward.
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