What is the Manifesto for Agile Software Development?

The Manifesto for Agile Software Development is the Mecca for software development. It is a guiding document that helps scrum masters work with their teams to practice agile development more effectively.

The manifesto is a document written by Kent Beck, Mike Beedle, Arie van Bennekum, Alistair Cockburn, Ward Cunningham, Martin Fowler, James Grenning, Jim Highsmith, Andrew Hunt, Ron Jeffries, Jon Kern, Brian Marick, Robert C. Martin, Steve Mellor, Ken Schwaber, Jeff Sutherland, and Dave Thomas.

There are some legendary names in the list above and this group of minds has shaped what software development is today.

Manifesto Breakdown

The manifesto states that:

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it.

Like all things is life, we learn by doing. You can take multiple years of courses and read numerous books about a topic but at the end of the day I think that most people learn best through applying this skillset and learning from mistakes over time.

Values

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

• Working software over comprehensive documentation

• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

• Responding to change over following a plan

It is noted that while there is value in the items on the right side of these statements, the items on the left are more important.

When agile development is implemented in an organization, I feel like it goes well at first and then teams look back on their sprints in a retrospective and slowly adjust their actions to achive optimal performance.

Over time, it is pretty easy for the items on the right to take precedence as there are directives from the top of the organization to implement strict processes and tools that limit the agility of their teams. This is where a scrum master (or individual who is passionate about agile development) comes in to promote aligning our teams to the left side of the spectrum over strictly following a plan, contract negotiation, and strict processes.

I think revisiting the Manifesto for Agile Software Development every couple of months can help to remind you what is important and how our teams can work together better to deliver valuable software that delivers real business value.