The meaning of Agile

Agile is a word that accurately describes a philosophy and practice of development that has gained credibility and voice in recent years. The practice and motivation of what many companies, teams, managers and developers are calling Agile, however, often seems a long way from the everyday use of the word ‘agile’ or what was meant originally by those who championed the term and the movement. Scrum, for example, is often portrayed as a simple adjunct to classic project management practices, its empirical basis and self-directed team philosophy often lost in a blur of micromanagement. The technical practices of Extreme Programming are often ignored as inconvenient or not core to a management-centric view of Agile. The same oversimplification and cherry picking can be seen in the wave of Lean thinking adopted into Agile as approaches such as Kanban enter the mainstream and suffer their own dilution.

This talk rewinds the clock and explores the motivation and implications behind the original Manifesto for Agile Software Development, the role of technical practices, the importance of quality in code and architecture, the evolutionary and adaptive nature of Agile, and the psychological and social underpinnings for many of the practices and concepts to be found in the successful application of Agile thinking.