One of the many corporate buzzwords that we have been hearing over the past couple years is “agile:” “we want to be an agile organization.” Like “innovative” and “empowered,” I believe that “agile” is losing its intended meaning. I’m starting to cringe when I hear it. I’m worried that an effect of this management-speak is that its overuse will trivialize a powerful software development methodology called Agile. I have heard organizational leaders describe how they have adopted agile software development: “we have agile software developers; see, we’re an agile organization.” Do these leaders understand Agile as a methodology?
The values of Agile software development include responsiveness to change, face-to-face communication, and iterative and incremental delivery. We can all certainly benefit from being more agile (with a lower-case “a”). Doing Agile involves a little more than adopting a set of values (although that goes a long way culturally). Take Scrum–the most popular Agile framework. It is structured, empirical, and adaptive with defined rules, roles, events, and deliverables, and it’s been around since 1986. Many IT organizations have successfully adopted Scrum techniques and have increased productivity and shortened release cycles. It would be a shame if we started equating Agile with the buzzword “agile” and dismissed Agile software development out of hand as the latest management fad. The commercialization of these open frameworks is not helping the situation. Perhaps it’s time for a new label for Agile software development.
–Beth Snapp
