A brief history of (Agile) work.

From an engineering perspective, work is a form of useful energy (Potter and Somerton 1995, p.33). It is recognized when a force moves an object (Potter and Somerton 1995, p.33). As a form of energy, work is governed by the Laws of Thermodynamics, and as such, it can only be converted from other forms of energy (1st Law) and never with 100% efficiency (2nd Law) (Potter and Somerton 1995, pp.98-99). As engineers we are frequently tasked to find ways to extract work more efficiently from resources available to us. The rate at which work is done is termed “power” (Potter and Somerton 1995, p.10). This means that the faster a system can complete the work required of it the more powerful it is. Our ancestors devised ever more powerful tools and techniques to help them get their work done, first with sticks and bones, then with rock, then metal, animals, machines, chemicals and electricity? (Diamond 2005, pp.239-265).

Diamond describes how humans leverage collaboration as a way of getting work done, first with families, then tribes, groups and eventually complex societies (Diamond 2005, pp.265-293). However, success for the society means that the members must move from generalists who can perform all tasks to specialists who focus on a single area (Diamond 2005, pp.276-281). In the mediaeval era this specialization took root in English surnames like Smith, Tanner, Miller and so on where a person’s profession, often family trade, became their surname. In the Industrial Revolution this move to specialization accelerated again as the early economists like Adam Smith described massive jumps in productivity in his famous pin factory (Smith 2012, pp.9-10). This resulted in mass production techniques with a resulting fall of marginal cost and a better quality good at more affordable prices. This trend continued through the 19th and early 20th centuries and lead to Fordism with its emphasis on efficient assembly lines (Mullins 2007, p.46) and Taylorism where every motion was measured, and waste eliminated, to devise the most efficient ways of getting work done (Mullins 2007, pp.43-46).

While higher specialization and efficiency meant greater profits for powerful company owners it meant faster and more monotonous work for the people performing the actual work (Mullins 2007, p.46). From the earliest parts of the industrial revolution luddites in the UK and saboteurs in France were objecting to changing ways of working and demeaning work practices. Economists like Marx sought to shift power from the bourgeoise bosses to the working proletariat (Mullins 2007, p.94). Resource shortages of materials, cash and workers caused by the second world war drove techniques like statistical quality control to the fore which focused on close monitoring of both work and the workers by researchers like Shewart and Deming (Greasley 2006, pp.297-298). These techniques would take root in Japanese factories post war and give birth to what is now considered “Lean Thinking” (Womack and Jones 2003, pp.15-90). In Europe and the US academics were also observing the importance of worker welfare when it came to productivity. Maslow published his hierarchy of needs (Mullins 2007, pp.257-260), Mayo and others were demonstrating “the Hawthorne Effect” where productivity increased just by someone taking an interest in work being done (Mullins 2007, pp.51-54) and McGregor was describing styles of management in his Theory X and Theory Y (Mullins 2007, pp.444-446).

In the second half of the twentieth century economics shifted again with the invention of software. Unlike all physical goods that preceded it, non-embedded software offered a zero marginal cost - that is once a functioning computer program is written there is essentially no additional cost to create one copy or one million copies and high demand side increasing returns (Saloner et al. 2001, pp.305-328). This promised unimaginable wealth for those who could be first to market with a software product that consumers wanted (Saloner et al. 2001, p.306). Better yet, the software products were considered to be “art” from a legal perspective and so producers couldn’t be held liable for any failures their product caused (Rice 2008, pp.179-243). This lead to an incentive for speed of delivery over quality (Rice 2008, pp.131-137). From the first major mainframe computers in the 1960s to the current ongoing excitement around Large Language Models (LLMs) and the promise of artificial intelligence there has been almost nonstop innovation in computers and their programs.?

One of these innovations took place around 2001 when a group of thought leaders in software development met in Utah and developed a series of values of principles which is now known as the “Agile Manifesto for Software Development”, or simply, “the Agile Manifesto” (Cockburn and Highsmith 2001; Highsmith and Cockburn 2001). The Agile manifesto challenged the traditional “waterfall” approach to planning, developing, and delivering software and instead put an emphasis on iterative approaches, team focused with short feedback loops to determine exact customer requirements (Abbas et al. 2008). It sought to balance past understanding on specialization of work with a focus on empowering teams of workers (Abbas et al. 2008). Under the umbrella of Agile approaches were many techniques that pre-existed the manifesto such as Scrum, Extreme Programming (XP), Crystal and so on (Dings?yr et al. 2012). Other approaches to Agile at large scale implementations - such as SAFe, LeSS, Scrum of Scrums and so on - would follow subsequently (Dings?yr et al. 2019). These approaches have become widely used across industry and also extensively studied (Abrahamsson et al. 2010).

Our current research seeks to add to the literature by leveraging queueing theory to assess Agile systems and identify ways to help them scale. We are looking for volunteers to share process data from Jira (or similar tools) to add to our research database. In return we will provide a custom predictability report to help you understand your work better and how your process compares to our benchmark data (see image below). If your are able to help or would like to learn more please DM me or email [email protected]

References:

Abbas, N., Gravell, A.M. and Wills, G.B. (2008) 'Historical Roots of Agile Methods: Where Did “Agile Thinking” Come From?', in XP 2008, 94–103.

Abrahamsson, P., Balijepally, V., Barnes, K.A., Baskerville, R., Biddle, R., Boehm, B., Bond, P.L., Cannon, A., Chan, K.C.C., Conboy, K., Dingsoeyr, T., Dyb?, T., Hellmann, T.D., Hosseini-Khayat, A., Iivari, J., Iivari, N., Koolmanojwong, S., Lane, J.A., Lui, K.M., Madsen, S., Martin, A., Maurer, F., Moe, N.B., Morgan, L., Nerur, S., Noble, J., Oza, N., Pries-Heje, J., Robinson, H., Sharp, H., Siponen, M. and Turner, M. (2010) Agile Software Development. Current Research and Future Directions, Berlin: Springer-Verlag.

Cockburn, A. and Highsmith, J. (2001) 'Agile software development, the people factor', Computer, 34(11), 131-133, available: https://dx.doi.org/10.1109/2.963450.

Diamond, J. (2005) Guns, germs and steel - a short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years, Croydon, Surrey: Vintage.

Dings?yr, T., Falessi, D. and Power, K. (2019) 'Agile Development at Scale: The Next Frontier', IEEE Software, 36(2), 30-38, available: https://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ms.2018.2884884.

Dings?yr, T., Nerur, S., Balijepally, V. and Moe, N.B. (2012) 'A decade of agile methodologies: Towards explaining agile software development', Journal of Systems and Software, 85(6), 1213-1221, available: https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2012.02.033.

Greasley, A. (2006) Operations Management, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.

Highsmith, J. and Cockburn, A. (2001) 'Agile Software Development: The Business of Innovation', Computer, 34(9), 120-127.

Mullins, L.J. (2007) Management and Organisational Behaviour, Eighth ed., London: Pearson Education.

Potter, M.C. and Somerton, C.W. (1995) Thermodynamics for Engineers, New York: McGraw-Hill.

Rice, D. (2008) Geekonomics, Indiana: Pearson Education.

Saloner, G., Shepard, A. and Podolny, J. (2001) Strategic Management, New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Smith, A. (2012) Wealth of Nations, Hertfordshire, UK: Wordsworth Editions.

Womack, J.P. and Jones, D.T. (2003) Lean thinking - banish waste and create wealth in your corporation, 2003 Edition ed., London, UK: Simon & Schuster.