THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS AGILE METHODOLOGY
Before Café Curiosity, I had another blog where I posted some of my early work. Among all the articles I wrote there, one stands out as still being relevant, even three years later (perhaps slightly less so now that the Agile craze has passed). I wanted to repost it here so that more people can find it and, hopefully, benefit from it in their careers.
AGILE IS NOT A METHODOLOGY SO STOP CALLING IT THAT WAY
According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary methodology is defined as:
A body of methods, rules, and postulates employed by a discipline: a particular procedure or set of procedures
The first Agile Coach I had, commented: "Every time someone says 'The Agile Methodology' a fairy dies, and there aren't a lot of them so we should stop killing them".
Now, each time I am in a workshop, with a team, a webinar, or any other situation that someone calls Agile "The Agile Methodology" I imagine a fairy dying like Tinkerbell in Peter Pan: Return to Never Land.
Words have power and if we call Agile a "Methodology" we are implying that there is a prescribed set of rules to follow and just like magic we are agile.
But if Agile is not a Methodology, what is it?
A quick google search returns these results:
AGILE methodology is a practice that promotes continuous iteration of development and testing throughout the software development lifecycle of the project. Guru99
Agile is a time-boxed, iterative approach to software delivery. Agile Nutshell
Agile is a group of methodologies. Atlassian
Agile is an umbrella term for light-weight frameworks, tools and techniques that help teams and organizations achieve agility. Agility.im
Explaining the story of Agile, its differences with traditional methods, the various practices, its values, and principles... Are way beyond the scope of this post. We are here to answer the question What is Agile?
I went back to the sacred scriptures the "Manifesto for Agile Software Development" and in the history section (yes there is a history section it's not just the values and principles in different languages") I found the only reference of what Agile is:
The Agile movement is not anti-methodology, in fact, many of us want to restore credibility to the word methodology. We want to restore a balance. We embrace modeling, but not in order to file some diagram in a dusty corporate repository. We embrace documentation, but not hundreds of pages of never-maintained and rarely-used tomes. We plan, but recognize the limits of planning in a turbulent environment. Those who would brand proponents of XP or SCRUM or any of the other Agile Methodologies as "hackers" are ignorant of both the methodologies and the original definition of the term hacker.
Source: History: The Agile Manifesto
Agile is a movement
This is an elegant and powerful definition, we open the possibilities to all that is and will be Agile, not only the practices like Extreme Programming, SCRUM, DSDM, Kanban, Feature-Driven Development... but also anything based on the values and principles, and everything in between.
But elegant and fuzzy definitions, are not the best. The same google search showed me the best definitions I've heard:
Agile is a mindset — it’s a way of thinking — that’s defined by four values, described by twelve principles, and then manifested through an unlimited number of practices or different ways of working Ahmed Sidky
Agile is an umbrella term for a set of frameworks and practices based on the values and principles expressed in the Manifesto for Agile Software Development and the 12 Principles behind it Agile Alliance
So next time you hear "The Agile Methodology" don't let another fairy die and kindly remark that Agile is not a methodology, it's much more than that.