Agile Manifesto and Principles of Agile

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May 24, 2024

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Agile Manifesto

The evolution of Agile software processes is an attempt to deal with the issues introduced by unpredictable and rapidly changing markets. The Agile Manifesto emerged at a ski lodge in Utah in 2001. The manifesto established a common set of values and principles for all Agile methodologies.

1. Individuals and Interactions Over Processes and Tools

This is the first core value provided by the Agile Manifesto. It states that the communication between the members of the team must be valued more than the involvement of processes and tools in project development. In other words, the Agile approach values people over processes.

When there are no communication gaps in a team, it can perform better. Thus, Agile methodologies rely on periodic inspect-and-adapt cycles. The inspect-and-adapt cycle can range from a few minutes to a few hours with continuous integration, to every day with a daily standup meeting, to each iteration with a review. Just increasing the frequency of feedback and communication is not enough to eliminate communication problems. The inspect-and-adapt cycles work well only when team members exhibit several key behaviors:

• Respect for each individual in the team.
• Truth in all communications.
• Transparency of all data, decisions, and actions.
• Trust that each one of them in the team will show their involvement and contribute to their fullest.
• Engagement in the team and working towards achieving the team's goals.

It is not as simple as it appears for the team members to exhibit this type of quality. To inculcate this quality, Agile management must provide a supportive environment, team coaches must promote their inclusion. and team members must display them. Only then the team can achieve its full potential.

Most teams avoid truth, transparency, and trust because of past negative experiences from conflict or cultural norms. To reduce these tendencies, team members and the management must promote positive conflict. When teams employ positive conflict, not only do they encourage more productive behavior, but also work together and achieve several other benefits such as:

• The team uses process improvements to identify bottlenecks in the organization tackle them and then, systematically eradicate them in priority order.
• Discussing conflicting ideas leads to innovation.
• The resolution of conflicting agendas happens when teams align and work around common goals and discuss their potential conflicts and concerns.
• Commitment to work together happens when people agree on common goals and then put in all their efforts to improve both personally and as a team.

Agile methodologies promote commitment and self-organization by encouraging team members to Select items from a prioritized work list, manage their work, and improve their work practices. These practices make up the foundation of self-organization, which is the driving force for achieving results.

2. Working Software Over Comprehensive Documentation

One of the biggest differences that Agile development brings is working software. All of the Agile methodologies stress delivering small increments of working software to the customer at fixed intervals.

Working software is more effective and attracts customers or clients with ease of understanding, rather than presenting documents in each interval or increment.

3. Customer Collaboration Over Contract Negotiation

The rate of success of software assignments worldwide has more than doubled, over the past two decades. These advancements are the fruits of smaller projects and more frequent deliveries, which allowed customers to provide acknowledgment of working software at frequent intervals.

Getting the customer involved in the software development process is a very important step that leads to the success of projects. Agile methodologies encourage this value by arranging to have a customer representative work along with the development team. Industry data shows that it is through daily customer collaboration that Agile projects worldwide have more than twice the success rate of traditional projects on average. Now that Agile methodologies realize the value of customer engagement, they have a place specifically meant for the customer representative on their development teams.

4. Responding to Change Over Following a Plan

To create products that provide business value and satisfy customers, teams must respond to change. Industry reports predict that more than 60% of product or project requisites change during the software development stage. In widespread projects, even when they meet within estimated budget, on time, and with all the features, customers are not satisfied because the end product is not exactly what they wanted. 'Humphrey's Law' states that customers never know what they require until they see working software. If customers see working software only at the end of the project, it will be too late to make changes to incorporate their feedback. Agile methodologies seek customer feedback throughout the project so that teams can incorporate feedback and accommodate new requirements as the software product is being developed.

All Agile methodologies have built-in processes to alter their plans periodically based on feedback from the customer or customer representative. These plans are designed to deliver the highest business value first. As 20% of the features hold 80% of the value, well-run Agile projects tend to finish early. As a result, developers enjoy their work more and customers are happier. The basis of Agile methodologies is that there must be change to succeed. For this, there are processes, such as reviews that are designed to reconsider priorities regularly based on business value and customer feedback.

Note:

Agile coding method is used by 60-80% of software developers today. This is a big leap from the 1% in the year 2001.

This is because Agile offers:

• Enhanced quality
• More opportunities for improvements along the course of the project
• Improved customer satisfaction
• Better alignment between developers and clients
• Improved time to market
  
  

Principles of Agile

The Agile Manifesto consists of the following 12 principles:

• Customer Satisfaction: Customer satisfaction is of the highest priority. This is achieved by delivering working software at frequent intervals.
  
  
• Changeability: The requirements can be changed or added at any point in time. These changes are even welcomed at the later stage of development.
  
  
• Time-boxed Delivery: Working software is frequently delivered at fixed time boxes, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months.
  
  
• Collaboration: Customers/Clients actively show their involvement throughout the project along with the developers.
  
  
• Recognition: The project members are appreciated and motivated by rewards and recognized for their work. They work in a supportive environment.
  
  
• Face-to-face: Face-to-face discussions are held to easily convey the needs.
  
  
• Progress Measurement: Working software is used to measure progress rate.
  
  
• Sustainable Development: Agile processes advocate sustainable development. The clients, developers, and customers/end users should maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
  
  
• Excellence: Continuous governance to technical excellence and simple design brings out agility.
  
  
• Simplicity: Simplicity-maintaining the ease of understanding.
  
  
• Self-Organizing: The best architectures, requisites, and designs arise from self-organizing teams.
  
  
• Reflection: At fixed intervals, the team members reflect on how to become more effective, then return and match their behavior accordingly.