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Brian Marick

Not many people know that there was a *second* Agile Manifesto meeting, November 2001 at the OOPLSA conference.

It was an *enormously* botched opportunity. It revealed the original signatories were too damn alpha-male-ish to ever agree again. And because all the rest of us checked out of the argumentation, we ceded all the ability to shape Agile to those with the strongest immediate economic motives.

I wonder if @PragmaticAndy remembers the note I passed to him and PragDave?

@PragmaticAndy My private history of the Agile Manifesto workshop is that I told my wife after the first night “there’s a powerful stench of testosterone around here”. (That was a reference to the “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” movie, which used “mendacity” instead of “testosterone”. It’d become a catchphrase between us.)

@PragmaticAndy The first Agile Manifesto workshop would have been a disaster because of alpha-male posturing, had not a few people split off and came back with the agilemanifesto.org/ in something close to its current form.

*I* think I know who two of those three (?) people were, but everyone’s memories are confused.

agilemanifesto.orgManifesto for Agile Software DevelopmentWe are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. These are our values and principles.

@PragmaticAndy My conclusion here is:

- agilemanifesto.org/ had a *huge* influence, but it could very easily have never been written. We got lucky.
- So much of later elaborations on Agile have been influenced by how the originators did *not* get lucky, and were not smart enough to protect what we’d created.

agilemanifesto.orgManifesto for Agile Software DevelopmentWe are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. These are our values and principles.

@marick @PragmaticAndy was just saying this earlier today. I think we’re all still frustrated by that.

@logosity @marick So much of the spirit of the manifesto was simply ground to pulp by corporate antibodies.

@PragmaticAndy @marick This is one of my favorite examples of Weinberg's Law of Raspberry Jam: The manifesto spread the message wide, but it got really thin: too thin for the spirit/principles/why's to survive, but sufficiently "hot new thing" to fuel the hype cycle for decades (much of which seems to have rounded down to "agilifying" pre-agile concepts and practices so folks could keep justifying their same old practices).

And now? It just means "good" full stop. Example:

Encountered a person just a few weeks ago, arguing that solving for the general case up front (vs narrow focus and incremental delivery) was necessary so we could be "agile" — not the first time I've heard that, but it was stunning due to the speaker's utter lack of perceived need to do more than make an appeal to the "agile" authority to make their case.

An almost perfect example of the complete inversion of meaning relative to anything that would've been recommended on the XP mailing list pre-manifesto.

@logosity @PragmaticAndy @marick: Something I appreciate about agile is that those with the spirit (and authors), for the most part still practice.

I didn’t know the manifesto was a thing until after “doing it” for 3 years as a lone-wolf freelancer.

Not much of a joiner and spent the first couple years seeing if the marketing matched the mentality; is this really my tribe kinda vibe?

I say yes.

And it’s probably with the same trepidation most of us feel when identifying with a group. 1/

@logosity @PragmaticAndy @marick: With that said, I identify with the ideas and attitudes, not the industry. (Feel like I’m in V for Vendetta.)

The ideas are bulletproof, the industries aren’t.

If the negative aftertaste of agile continues to build, eventually someone will write a letter, and post it on a door. A “new thing” will be born, and chances are, it will be the way the previous thing started or was intended to be before it became “like butter scraped over too much bread.”

2/2

@itsjoshbruce @logosity @PragmaticAndy I feel guilty because I’ve written no code for over a year. My problem is that I want to write widely useful code - I’m uncomfortable just fooling around on my own. (For example, when I started learning Clojure, I was used to TDD with mocks, so I had to write a test framework that supported it. github.com/marick/midje)

That’s a bad approach, but it’s mine, dammit.

GitHubGitHub - marick/Midje: Midje provides a migration path from clojure.test to a more flexible, readable, abstract, and gracious style of testingMidje provides a migration path from clojure.test to a more flexible, readable, abstract, and gracious style of testing - marick/Midje

@itsjoshbruce @logosity @PragmaticAndy Re: “If the negative aftertaste of agile continues to build, eventually someone will write a letter”

I’m not sure why a majority or plurality of the original manifesto authors shouldn’t be the ones to write that letter. It may be too late: a decade ago, the names might have mattered, but they probably don’t now. Unless we got good PR.

@marick @logosity @PragmaticAndy: Over the years I think they have.

PragDave 7 years ago: m.youtube.com/watch?v=a-BOSpxY

The anti-SAFe statements from all the authors and long-timers (yourself included).

Unfortunately, as with most movements, there’s a wave of popular voices devouring the originals and each other; “Scrum isn’t agile,” for example.

It can feel unsafe to experiment and self-express and self-learn. 1/

@marick @logosity @PragmaticAndy: I believe agile is about:

- discovering better ways of working,
- meeting folks where they are, and
- those doing the work know best how to do it.

The community can feel more like being frustrated people can’t start at the “end.” And hot takes of the vein *this* way is the best way for all people at all times. As if individual and collective progress isn’t an iterative process.

Reminds me of a Barbara Kruger piece: Untitled (How Dare You Not Be Me?) 2/

@marick @logosity @PragmaticAndy: That’s the side of me that’s frustrated with agile, its authors, and some of the influential voices in the community.

I could blame corporate, managers, certifying bodies, tool makers, all sorts of folk. I just don’t think there’s much value in it.

The dominant side of me still thinks work doesn’t have to suck. Further, if we can cultivate a space and collaborate on guidelines and guardrails within which to play the game, awesome things will happen. 3/3

ps. On the notion of: …hot takes of the vein *this* way is the best way for all people at all times.

If this is the belief, there will be a selection bias when choosing playmates. This will tend to lead to a reduction of the diversity of thought. Which will tend to lead to a reduction in innovative thinking.

It’s a whole lot easier to travel alone than in a group. When traveling in a group, it’s easier if the group thinks and acts alike.

Diversity and inclusion are hard; hence gatekeeping.

@itsjoshbruce @logosity @PragmaticAndy What I was thinking was that “lightweight methods” had little impact in the late 90’s. But a well-worded manifesto, together with a bunch of collectively identifiable and semi-respectable names behind it, all at the same time, had a big impact.

Random Manifesto authors, saying dismissive things at random intervals, just can’t have the same oomph.

@marick @logosity @PragmaticAndy: Think the next wave will be nothing but lightweight methods.

Like decoupling software.

We’ll forget the “monolith,” but keep the “good” parts.

XP had things it’s not remembered for having. The “good” parts are integrated into things like Scrum, which I think did a better job of the more traditional project management things. The other ones also had similar things, and they’ve been lost to time and name recognition.

Feel like I’m describing Unix pipes. lol

@logosity @PragmaticAndy @marick Yeah I've heard young devs talk about how to improve Agile, and end up inventing waterfall, without the slightest understanding that that's what they've done.

@itaryan @logosity @PragmaticAndy I’ve long had this tension between my reaction that “you need to understand history!” and the counter-reaction that “history will inhibit your imagination!”

My hunch is that the first is more important these days.

It’s also interesting that I’m assuming the Great Man who Alone Strides Forward into New Intellectual Lands. Feh.

@itaryan @logosity @PragmaticAndy @marick Young, old, devs, PMs, CEOs, people with impressive Agile pedigrees. I think everyone is equally capable of reinventing the same faulty systems. Personally I think it’s not the individuals, it’s the default ingrained human approach to organizing a project that is flawed, and the only ways to avoid the traps are to learn from failing or by studying history. And then learn from failing.

@masto @itaryan @logosity @PragmaticAndy As an old guy speaking to someone I assume is younger, I urge you to find the balance between “we’re doomed to reinvent the same faulty systems” and “with this one trick, everything becomes simple”.

@marick @masto @logosity @PragmaticAndy
I don't really believe in processes, just people. The most successful project I was ever on was waterfall. Very well managed, came in on time and under budget, was still running along sweetly when I was called in to monitor a DB upgrade 10 years later. Agile (certainly now) is whatever people want it to mean. Or to quote a quote in my upcoming ICSE 23 paper "they claim it's Agile. It's not. It's waterfall with extra meetings."

@itaryan @masto @logosity @PragmaticAndy To some extent it’s playing the odds. I’ve generally found that people are not amenable to “OK, approach X would clearly work better if everything goes right, but what are the chances that will happen?” People assume their plan will work.

I think an attitude that favors controlling risk rather than optimizing delivery is a good bet.

@itaryan @masto @logosity @PragmaticAndy
However, I thought Covid supply chain disruptions would dampen the business community’s obsession with efficiency, and tilt them toward resilience. But that clearly hasn’t happened. Now that I think about it, it’s perhaps because the *companies* didn’t suffer from the disruptions, but only their customers.

@marick @PragmaticAndy It's the fate of all movements. They're at best vehicles for change, temporarily. But soon enough, they become the original status quo, because the status quo always wins. The dice are loaded 🙂

@jasongorman @PragmaticAndy That seems a little too absolute. We do not in fact work in the “dark satanic mills” of industrial revolution England. There has been progress.

Too much focus on the likelihood of failure harmfully inhibits any attempt to improve the current situation.

@marick @PragmaticAndy fwiw, thank you for being a part of this. can’t even count how many times i’ve pointed to this site to show how a given process is the opposite of agile and actually encourage a quick conversation that saves everyone involved a bunch of time and effort

@marick If you're willing to say, what do you wish you could have gotten out of a second meeting?

@noelrap An interesting question. I can’t answer specifically, given how long it’s been, but my impression of the meeting was that two or three people had extremely definite but contradictory opinions about how Agile should go forward. I’d say they were equally focused on “how can I benefit?” and “what could be the next step?”.

@noelrap
I’d say that the rest of us basically checked out and let them argue. When they agreed that they would never agree and that we should give up on the idea of a consensus position, we passively agreed.

“How can I benefit?” and “How can I entrench my *specific* ideas” took over, and there was no collective pushback.

@noelrap
A better result from the meeting would have been an alternative attitude (that I believe existed) with some weight of authority behind it. But we all wandered off into irrelevance.

@noelrap A core thing about the Agile Manifesto meeting was that all of us had good ideas about how to develop software and were disastrously unable to keep those ideas front-and-center when the meeting happened to produce a catchy meme.

@marick Hmm. I barely even remember the 2nd meeting ;) I do recall abandoning the then-nascent agile alliance. I felt it was a huge disappointment even then.

@marick @PragmaticAndy I wasn’t at the meeting, of course, but I was at the conference and recall you making a joke about the “Torpid Alliance”.