The reasons why the Agile manifesto was established
The Agile manifesto available here was established simply because the traditional ways of running software development projects weren’t as effective as they were supposed to. Therefore, the agile practitioners who gathered in Utah in 2001 decided to refresh the way people delivered software. The document puts forwards 12 principles and 4 values that they believe software developers should stick with to successfully run Agile projects. The document was called “Manifesto” to indicate a shift in software development.
No one-size-fits-all solution
“We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:.”
— The Agile Manifesto
The Agile Manifesto starts with the quotation above. In the VUCA world you need to dig deeply to find an answer to the solution. This is where Agile methodologies come in. Yet, they don’t give you a recipe for success – you need to uncover the way(s) yourself by the trial-and-error. It’s we people, and not tools we use make it happen.
Agile manifesto: people are the highest value
What Agile values most is people and interactions between them. Mind you, it’s a group of people that put ideas into value in the first place. Are tools and processes to exploit people, or rather people are to make use of them to reach their objective? The answer is obvious. Processes and tools are important indeed, yet they’re for the people to use. Without people they matter nothing.
How Agile puts people first
Since it’s people who actually deliver value to the customer, we need to provide them with a friendly environment a Scrum Master is responsible for fostering such conditions. Instead of talking all the time about what tools to use, we should rather focus on how to make people communicate better with one another.
Agile Teams are empowered
Mature Agile teams are empowered to make decisions as to how they do their work, who is going to perform it. Empowerment means they receive anything they need to be self-sufficient in order to work better. As we’ve already pointed out above, the tools are a means to the goal. It’s the customer we think of anytime we use them. In other words, we think how to better our process of product delivery to satisfy the client. There is no empowerment without trust. It doesn’t mean team members have the right to do anything whatsoever. I’d elaborate more about an empowered team in a separate post in which I’II present some disadvantages of it too.
Customer is King
The first Agile Manifesto principle reads that a satisfied customer is what we’re looking for. That’s a cliched statement. This is what the Business world has always been about after all, hasn’t it? Hackneyed phrase again. The client will be satisfied if they keep getting their product early, continuously, and at regular intervals.
‘We’ instead of ‘you and we’
Agile principle NO. 3. In the Waterfall Approach the client was involved in a software-making process in the beginning and in the end. There was a gap in between these and Scrum jumped the opportunity to fill in this space. The client is now like a member of the team without whom the project is doomed to failure. To reduce deviation of the project, the client is involved for most of the time to give their feedback.
Motivated people work better
Another element of putting people first. Richard Branson, a British entrepreneur, once said that if you look after your stuff, they will look after your customers. Employees will find intrinsic motivation to work better in an environment where they get paid well, feel safe to express their opinions, make at least some impact on how the company operates, form a real team, and are respected and trusted. We call it a company culture. It’s much more than a dress code, the way the office is arranged etc.
The Agile Manifesto: putting people first is not easy
So putting people first concerns both those doing the work and those the work is being done for, which equals “we”. That’s what the Agile Manifesto strives for. Jim Hemerling in his TED talk lists five ways of how we can put people first to manage in an era of change. He’s on about the transformation of organizations.
