The story behind "Agile Manifesto"

Years ago, I heard about "Agile Manifesto" during my contemporary management class. The days ran and became using the agile methodologies on a daily basis as in my work usually with scrum ,also in my personal life using kanban through my trello account. so the story of the agile not that old and looking forward to writing about new, popular management methodologies in the next coming years, as we live in the digital disruptive era as the change became the number one rule ! 

But for now let's dive into the story behind the agile manifesto and let's go with Martin Fowler -who is one of 17 authors of the agile principles to tell us what really happened.

"In February 2001 a group of seventeen software pundits got together in Snowbird UT to discuss the growing field of what used to be called lightweight methods. We decide to use the term agile to describe this new breed of agile methods. We also wrote the Manifesto for Agile Software Development , setting out the values and principles of these agile processes. I was one of these self-elected visionaries and have since come across many questions about this group's origins and the subsequent founding of the agile alliance. This is my recollection of those events."

Kent invited a bunch of active XPers to his rural part of Oregon to discuss various issues in XP. As well as confirmed XPers he also invited a number of people who were interested but separate to XP: such as Alistair Cockburn, Jim Highsmith, and Dave Thomas.

At the meeting we discussed the relationship between XP and other methods of a similar ilk - at the time referred to as Lightweight Methods. We agreed that XP was best as a specific process: "a stake in the ground". We also agreed there was a lot of common ground between XP and some of these other methods. As a result of this (Uncle) Bob Martin decided to try to put together a meeting of people interested in this broader range of methods.

A wide range of people were contacted, basically whoever we thought was interested and active in this field. I'm sure we missed some people who would have been interested and valuable had they come, but we did try to cover as wide a ground as we could. After much discussion we settled on a meeting at Snowbird Utah from February 11-13 2001. Several of the people who were keen to come couldn't make it - in the end those that did were the 17 whose names appear on the manifesto.

We came to Snowbird with limited and varying expectations. We actually found that we quickly had a lot in common and agreed on many important aspects of software development. So we decided to go further than just talk. We liked the idea of writing a document that would both capture the common ground we felt we were discovering and act as a rallying cry to the software industry.

The first part of this was to find a good name. Informally the various methods we used had been called "lightweight methods". Few of us felt that was a good name. Some saw it as vaguely insulting, but all of us felt that it missed the point. Light in weight wasn't the point of these methods, it was just a symptom - as I've argued in The New Methodology. We considered a bunch of names, and agreed eventually on "agile" as we felt that captured the adaptiveness and response to change which we felt was so important to our approach.

The next part was to write the document. We decided to call it a manifesto since it was a call to arms and a statement of our beliefs. We worked primarily on our statement of values during the meeting and I'm very pleased with the result. I think the values really capture the core of the ideas that we shared during the meeting.

They not stopped at that end but  several people, both amongst the seventeen and new additions, wanted to see a more permanent organization set up. So in late 2001 they formed the Agile Alliance as a non-profit organization to act as a center for furthering agile methods. You won't be surprised to find that the arrangement of the Agile Alliance is very chaordic. All work in the alliance is done by programs that run very independently. There is a board which oversees the programs at quarterly intervals, but other than this check pointing mechanism the programs have a lot of independence as to what they do. Since then the Agile Alliance has developed into a stable on-going organization that organizes a bunch of work to promote and understand this new field. The showcase of this work is the annual agile conference. Anyone can join the alliance, subject to a membership fee, and membership allows you to elect the board who run the organization.

Through those years, agile principles converted from best practices for building successful software to way of thinking and daily routine tools because the effect of digitalization and using technologies which touch the most aspects of our life"

By, Ibrahim Hamouda Product Manager | Entrepreneurial Researcher