The Manifesto for Agile Software Development* emerged in 2001 as a method for software development. It has gained a lot of traction since then and has been adopted by numerous software developers as their preferred method of software development and delivery. I first became aware of the Manifesto and method while working for a tech company.
The actual content of the Manifesto is pretty straight forward. After going through it, you might think to yourself that all of this should be common sense, but one thing to remember is common sense is not always common. The values and principles were created with one underlying element and that is the ability to remain agile. Being agile is the ability to move quickly and easily.
This extends to life in general. Being agile should be a major underlying element of how we approach and live our life. This post will use the Manifesto as a guideline. We will explore ways to apply it to our life. As a note, the Manifesto sometimes refers to the team, but in some cases, we will take the liberty to apply the values or principles at the individual level instead.
The Agile Manifesto 4 Values:
▪Individuals and Interactions over processes and tools
We can apply this value to everyday life and the distractions we encounter through routines and technology. Life is way more about the people, places, and experiences than the schedules and latest gadgets. Routines and technology definitely have their place, but change things up every once in a while, take a trip, try something new, and make sure you spend quality time with family and friends…I.e. put down your devices!
▪Working Software over comprehensive documentation
We can loosely apply this to practice over theory. There is a famous quote (with disputed origins**) that states “In theory, there is no difference between practice and theory. In practice, there is.” What can we takeaway from this? An example of this might better explain this concept. You might have gone to college and gotten a degree in a certain discipline that you planned to use after college. For me that was Accounting. Now, there is only so much time within 4(cough…5) years that you can actually use to learn about that discipline. You would receive instruction about what you should be able to use in a job once you leave college. When it is time to join the real world, you might come to the realization rather quickly that things you learned in college might not be applicable in your role. This is not to say that college is useless, but more so that things you learned in college might not be usable in practice. This doesn’t necessarily discount theory because theory is necessary to drive practice, but in the end, theory that doesn’t adequately support practice will not help you as much as theory that does adequately supports practice. The main takeaway here is that you should probably spend more time figuring out what works in practice before doubling down on understanding the theory behind it.
▪Customer Collaboration over contract negotiation
This one might be a stretch, but I believe this fits into long term vs. short term thinking and solutioning. Humans have evolved to be biased towards the present. We value something that benefits/rewards us now over something that benefits/rewards us later, even when that benefit or reward would be far greater than what we would receive right away. We see this with saving for retirement. We would rather spend the money on something we’d use today than invest that money to use in retirement. It’s useful, when making a decision, to think about the long term effects of that decision. Ask yourself if you are inaccurately placing to much value on the short term return and not enough on the long term return. It might be beneficial to “walk” through the lifetime of the decision to see what benefits you most.
▪Responding to Change over following a plan
“Plans are of little importance, but planning is essential” – Winston Churchill
Plans lose their effectiveness as the variables used to make those plans change. Planning is the act or process of using those variables to create a plan. Therefore we should constantly be planning to respond to those variable changes. Plans are static, planning is dynamic. Life is full of surprises and trying to stick to a predetermined plan is only helpful in certain circumstances. For the most part, we must be willing to “go with the flow” when life throws us the unexpected curveball. If we become better at planning, we won’t be so frustrated or downhearted when our plans don’t pan out. We’ll know something has fundamentally changed and we are prepared to redirect our efforts to get the desired results.
The Agile Manifesto 12 Principles:
1. Customer satisfaction by early and continuous delivery of valuable software
If you want to create wealth or grow value in any area of your life, you must understand the compound effect. Compounding is the process and results of interests from a principal amount being reinvested in order to generate their own additional earnings. This applied and repeated overtime has an exponential growth curve leading to massive value creation. The more time and resources you lend to compounding, the greater return, so apply compounding as early and often as possible to as many areas of your life as possible.
2. Welcome changing requirements, even in late development
The world is dynamic. It is constantly changing and it seems like the changes are only happening quicker and more often than ever. It’s useless to get upset when something changes that alters your original plan because changes should almost always be expected nowadays. The ability to pivot is vital. Pivoting is taking you current position and trajectory and rotating that trajectory to align with the new direction you must go in order to be successful. The new direction is determined by the changing environment. And always remember to view failure as feedback rather than a final destination.
3. Working software is delivered frequently (weeks rather than months)
Productivity is a major key to success. The more you can produce of what others value, whether that is a product or a principle, the more success and happiness you should be able to achieve. You can look at Value #2 and Principle #7 to understand what we define “working” to be. Now, it’s about focusing on the frequent delivery of what’s working that will bring you the greater rewards. Productivity is all about getting the most out of your inputs as possible without sacrificing quality or production down the road.
4. Close, daily cooperation between business people and developers
Let’s break conventional math here and make 2 + 2 = 5. This principle has synergy written all over it. Partnerships or cooperative interactions are necessary for the success of any undertaking. It is very unlikely whether in business or in your personal life that you can have any type of sustainable success without having support from other people. It’s impossible to have all the answers and there’s always someone else smarter than you in some specific area. Don’t be afraid to ask for help and always remain open minded to other people’s ideas.
5. Projects are built around motivated individuals, who should be trusted
Your inputs help to determine your outputs. Just like you are what you eat: you are who you spend your time with. Put yourself around motivated and trustworthy people and you too will become better. This one can be hard because it ultimately might result in moving on from friends, sometimes family, who are not good influences on your life. You should be around people who support you and your endeavors and by putting yourself around other like-minded people, you remove some of the negative forces that were holding you back in life. You also get exposure to the methods and habits of people who might be more successful than you. Use this exposure to your benefit.
6. Face-to-face conversation is the best form of communication (co-location)
The Medium Makes the Difference, or in other words how you communicate, especially in times of conflict, is of utmost importance. You can say that face-to-face is always the best form of communication, but in today’s world, it’s not always reasonable. The major benefit of face-to-face communication is that it is very hard to take something out of context because we can apply tone of voice and body language to convey our message the way we want to. That is not easily done via email, voicemail, or text. Luckily, nowadays we have videoconferencing and FaceTime!
7. Working software is the primary measure of progress
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” – Anonymous
-and-
“If it don’t work, nix it” – System Tinker
This is similar to the value mentioned previously. The key takeaway, unless your job involves creating theories, is to spend more time in practice before delving too much into the theory behind the practice. Application and utilization is the ultimate test for a theory. If you can’t apply or utilize what the theory states to your life, stop wasting your time.
8. Sustainable development, able to maintain a constant pace
Doing anything in excess, typically has negative side effects and I believe that’s why the mantra “Everything in Moderation” is popular and actually holds weight. You have probably heard that life is a marathon, not a sprint. In reality, there will be times that you need to sprint, times you need to pace yourself, and times that you’ll need to rest. The important thing to know is what event you’re about to race.
9. Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design
Here’s a simple but effective formula that we get from the skill of design thinking. When problem solving: (1) define the problem, (2) research the problem, (3) ideate ways to solve the problem, (4) prototype ideas that you think best address the problem, (5) choose one of the prototypes that you think best addresses the problem, (6) implement the prototype, and (7) learn if the problem is solved. If it still remains, take away what you can from your last experiment and repeat the formula. Also, when you commit to something, always give 100% effort.
10. Simplicity—the art of maximizing the amount of work not done—is essential
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” – Albert Einstein
In the smart work – hard work paradigm, this points more to smart work, with a small caveat. Not all work is equal, and not all work is necessary. There are two important things to decide on when there is work to be done: Work to take on, and work to avoid. Knowing both allows you to optimize your time and your results. Keep things as simple as possible, but don’t confuse this with keeping things as easy possible. Sometimes it will take hard work to create the smart work.
11. Best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams
We’ll look at self-organizational theory to understand the implications of this principle. The world can seem like a large and chaotic place. It confuses and scares us at times. In all of this chaos, it is helpful to find some order. When we focus on creating some order in our life we can overcome the disorder that might derail us. This order allows us to organize our thoughts, priorities, and actions. It’s through this bottom-up approach that we can define and design our lives the way we want them to be rather than a top-down approach that is truly not reflective of one’s self. When you find yourself in a new area of complexity or chaos, calm your mind by trying to bring some order into your thinking. Write down what you’re observing, write down what you find curious, and try to get some answers. Go through several iterations of this and then try to create an initial plan of action, prioritize the plan, and proceed with the plan…always keeping in mind that your plans will most likely need to change along the way (see Value #4 – Responding to Change above).
12. Regularly, the team reflects on how to become more effective, and adjusts accordingly
We need to dedicate some time to reflect on what’s happening to us. We can easily get caught up with the busyness of life. We often don’t take the time to relax…and NO…one vacation a year will not suffice. You need to periodically, and more frequently and consistently, take some time to evaluate yourself. Ask yourself the what’s and why’s of what’s working and what’s not working. For what’s working, try to figure out how you can have more of that in your life. For what’s not working, try to figure out how to have less of it in your life. Remember: Reflection and a combination of Reinforcement (more of the good) or Redirection (away from the bad) = Growth.
*http://agilemanifesto.org/
**This quote has been attributed to Yogi Berra as one of his famous “Yogisms”, but there’s more evidence that this quote first started to make the rounds long after Yogi’s time.
System Tinker 