| Selçuk Kalafat, PMP, Customer Services Manager |
The term agile software development has become very common in the IT world. To start with a quick look back at agile's early days, the Agile Manifesto published in 2001 declared the following:
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools,
Working software over comprehensive documentation,
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation,
Responding to change over following a plan:
this is what we have come to value.
That is, while there is value in the items on the right,
we value the items on the left more.
Although there are different definitions, the key elements of agile can be summarized as follows:
. Agile emphasizes that while computers run the code, it is people who design the code and keep it going. (The Agile Samurai)
. Agile is a set of values and principles. (Agile Manifesto)
. Agile has the honesty to admit that software development is a complex process and, because requirements change, it cannot be planned perfectly.
Although these definitions and statements bring some clarity to what agile means, you may need practical examples of how agile is applied in everyday life.
In the Nordstrom Innovation Lab – Sunglass iPad App Case Study video, you can see strikingly, in 7 minutes, how agile is applied in practice and how its principles are put to work. In addition to this video, reading the 7 Rules of Continuous Innovation that Steve Denning describes in his book The Leader's Guide to Radical Management takes you one step further in understanding agile. Finally, combining the 7 principles in this book with the Agile Manifesto gives a portrait of agile that can be summarized as follows:
The 7 Rules of Continuous Innovation
1. Delight Your Customers
. Everything starts with setting the right goal. The aim of our work should be to delight the customer, not just to produce a product or service or to make money.
. When the goal is only to make money, people may set collaboration and creativity aside.
. The secret of a lasting relationship is building a customer base that will want to buy products or services from you today and tomorrow. What matters is nurturing the relationship, not making a one-time sale.
2. Build Self-Organizing Teams
. "It is very hard to explain to someone who has never been on a high-performing team what it is like." Kristin Arnold
. When you work with people who have different interpretations, perspectives and problem-solving methods, you can overcome problems you could not solve on your own.
. Only an empowered, self-organizing team with a culture of working together can succeed at solving a multidimensional problem like delighting customers.
3. Customer-Driven Iteration
. "What is small is easy to manage." Lao Tzu
. Thanks to customer-driven iteration, companies can keep their inventory and work in progress as small as possible. This lets them tailor products and services to customers' initial needs and respond quickly to changes in those needs.
. Customer-driven iterations increase an organization's efficiency by focusing on what adds value and avoiding work that does not. They also eliminate inefficient planning processes and provide evidence of real progress instead of unreliable progress reports.
4. Deliver Value to Customers in Every Iteration
. Customer-driven iterations require a serious shift in mindset. The key to success is being able to deliver value to your customer at the end of every iteration.
. Something small you deliver in the short term will delight your customers more than something big you deliver in the long term.
. The main focus should be delivering work of a quality that delights customers. Your next goal should be doing it faster.
5. Radical Transparency
. "The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off." Gloria Steinem
. The goal of delighting customers requires putting every obstacle on the table openly.
. "Radical Management" accepts that mistakes are inevitable and builds structures that enable fast learning from mistakes on the path to success.
6. Continuous Self-Improvement
. Continuous improvement is a set of behaviors and values focused on solving problems the moment they arise.
. The continuous improvement process must be followed every day.
. Continuous improvement is the responsibility of top management.
7. Interactive Communication
. "Modern organizations cannot be managed through superior-subordinate relationships. They must be built from teams that work together." Peter Drucker
. Traditional managers see their employees only as employees. In their communication, power is the currency.
. The "Radical Manager" sees communication as an exchange between one person and another. Hierarchy exists, but it stays in the background.
In this short article, I have tried to bring together the most prominent principles at the heart of agile. I hope it will be a step toward understanding agile.
Wishing you agile days :)
Sources
https://www.atlassian.com/agile/manifesto
https://www.atlassian.com/agile/scrum
https://www.atlassian.com/agile/kanban
https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/so-what-agile-really-about
http://www.acm-software.com/agile/
http://agilemanifesto.org/iso/tr/manifesto.html
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