Back to the future: origins and directions of the “Agile Manifesto” – views of the originators

Abstract

In 2001, seventeen professionals set up the manifesto for agile software development. They wanted to define values and basic principles for better software development. On top of being brought into focus, the manifesto has been widely adopted by developers, in software-developing organizations and outside the world of IT. Agile principles and their implementation in practice have paved the way for radical new and innovative ways of software and product development. In parallel, the understanding of the manifesto's underlying principles evolved over time. This, in turn, may affect current and future applications of agile principles. This article presents results from a survey and an interview study in collaboration with the original contributors of the manifesto for agile software development. Furthermore, it comprises the results from a workshop with one of the original authors. This publication focuses on the origins of the manifesto, the contributors' views from today's perspective, and their outlook on future directions. We evaluated 11 responses from the survey and 14 interviews to understand the viewpoint of the contributors. They emphasize that agile methods need to be carefully selected and agile should not be seen as a silver bullet. They underline the importance of considering the variety of different practices and methods that had an influence on the manifesto. Furthermore, they mention that people should question their current understanding of "agile" and recommend reconsidering the core ideas of the manifesto.

XP 2019 Panel: Agile Manifesto – Impacts on Culture, Education, and Software Practices

“…Because the Manifesto is owned by the original authors, it will never be changed. Maria Paasivaara agreed, citing a 2018 journal paper by Philipp Hohl and others that summarized some recent interviews with the original Manifesto authors [2].…”

How (UN) Happiness Impacts on Software Engineers in Agile Teams?

“…The study was conducted inside this company with 67 participants from five different agile projects (see Table 1). Each agile project was considered a distinct unit of study, based on the literature about agile principles and values [6,32,33,34,35,36]. We observed the projects from July 2019 to December 2019.…”

Strengths and Weakness of Traditional and Agile Processes - A Systematic Review

“…Mandal et al [16] also said that "Agile was a significant departure from the heavyweight document driven traditional software methodologies". There are 12 principles of Agile manifesto [1] whose detailed description is out of the scope of this paper. However, summarization of these principles was done by Mandal et al [1] and are presented as follows -Customer satisfaction, incorporation of rapid system change, frequent working software delivery, continues corporation of client and developer, motivated trusted individuals, continuous improvement, arrangement of face-to-face conversation, progress measurement, sustainable development, attention to technical excellence, simplicity, self-organizing teams, internal assessment for knowledge enhancement, quality assurance and economic development.…”

“…Before 2001 [1]- [13], the software industry used traditional software development processes (i.e., Classical waterfall model, iterative waterfall model, spiral model, RAD model). While these traditional models are known to be cost saving for bigger, off-shore projects, there is criticism that exists [13]- [25].…”

“…In 2001 [1], the original contributors of this evolution met and tried to identify the areas that these existing software methodologies had in common. Focusing on this common ground, led to the "Agile Manifesto".…”