As I write this post, it has been about 25 years since a group of talented software engineers held a small conference together to discuss the state of Software Development, and to see if they could articulate not just the problems of the day, but also express a way to address those problems and improve the craft as a whole. Many of those individuals were already titans in their field, and are still well respected to this day. Project management at the time constantly failed with software development because it tried to package tasks up like they were well-understood components in an assembly line process. The Agile Alliance recognised that troubleshooting and creativity can't be as easily scheduled as predefined problem domains can. Their legacy is a process of free thinking and flexibility that continues to inspire others decades later to manage software projects as people-centered rather than entirely product-driven.
While I was writing my previous blog post, I was thinking about the Agile manifesto that was the product of that conference, 25 years ago. I realised that while much of what the the Agile Alliance envisaged had been adopted by many teams and even many other industries well beyond software development, the intent and purpose of Agile has largely been lost in the misappropriation of its concepts, predominantly by those who have adopted Agility as a marketing tactic more than as a means of evolution and improvement. As a result, the word Agility has lost its meaning today, and the practice has lost its way along with the industry that at first shunned it, later adopted it, and has ultimately undermined it. This is certainly not the fault of the authors, and I don't claim to be as brilliant as them, nor do I criticise their work in any negative way. However, I do feel that they left a lot on the table, and as worded, left the manifesto prone to misinterpretation.
I have felt both personally and professionally saddened to see the state that Agile has found itself in, and I also can't believe that I would be the only software person to feel this way. I feel very strongly that we need agility today more than we ever have before, not as it has become, but as I believe its original authors intended it to be.
The underlying concepts of the Agile Manifesto are sound for the most part, yet it also needed to be more assertive, more intentional, yet remain simple and accessible. I felt a strong desire to establish my own business in a way that embraces and embodies the spirit of Agility, and institute a methodology that is itself Agile, but is also robust, and sustainable. So I created my own manifesto for a more intentional way to create software, focused on quality, practicality, and grounded in common sense and reality. I decided it was finally time to make this public in the hopes that others might find it as useful and liberating as we do. You can find out more on the PRISM webpage.