“A common cause of disaster in software development is that the end product is precisely what the customer originally ordered,” an article in the September 20th 2001 print edition of The Economist said. “In a world moving at Internet speed, a customer’s objectives are constantly being revised, so programmers have to be able to hit a moving target. Is there any formula for coping with this sort of unpredictability?

“With this in mind, 17 leading software gurus holed up in a Utah ski resort in February 2001 to produce a Manifesto for Agile Software Development. Portentous as it may sound, the manifesto represented the distillation of several successful team-oriented techniques, and hoped to inspire innovation groups outside the confines of software development.”

Eliminate ambiguity
In a blog post on July 25th 2009, Rick Garibay stated: “Eight years later, after having applied the principles and values prescribed [in the Agile Manifesto], these values have been tremendously successful at providing the software industry with similar benefits that Lean Manufacturing furnished for Toyota.

“Unfortunately, we’ve also learned that too many individuals and shops have given Agile software development a bad name by using it as a fig leaf to hide behind delivering crappy software and calling it agile, further setting back software engineering as a mature discipline.

“As a result, our very own Bill of Rights has been born. The Manifesto for Software Craftmanship is founded on the original Manifesto but raises the bar to eliminate any ambiguity around the expectations of professional software engineers to not only produce working software, but ensuring it is well designed. Not merely reactively responding to change, but strategically partnering with the business to proactively add value while building a community of professionals that can teach and learn from one another.”

Rick Garibay asks, “Do you believe in these values? Do you agree that as an industry we are still failing to add value and deliver high quality software? If so, I implore you to think about the values as a whole, and if you are so inclined, sign and commit to the Manifesto for Software Craftmanship.”

Is another manifesto necessary?

I met a Malawian, a gatekeeper at a game reserve there, who was mauled during a lion attack. His face is terribly scarred and he’s missing an ear; but he’s alive.

That got me thinking about you. It’s likely you’ve been mauled too. Not by a lion, but by something more powerful and pervasive: Bureaucracy. And you’ve got the scars to prove it; yet somehow you’ve made it through.

Bureaucracy is the mother-of-all legacy systems. It directs what you do and how you do it. And if you want to overturn it, or simply change it a little, or arrest its operation for just one team, it won’t let you. I’ll bet it’s the single biggest impediment to your agile ambitions. But you’re correct to want to change it, because these days bureaucracy is not the best organizing principle we can think of.

Peace, then change
I know it’s a daunting challenge to change something that’s so entrenched in people’s thinking, in their styles, techniques, attitudes, expectations. But that’s the thing: Most people actually don’t think, they just do. Managing Agile is here to help you question the status quo so that your colleagues start asking why. Managing Agile can help you demystify and desensitize the interactions between traditional management and the agilistas.

Notwithstanding they work for the same company, each doing their best, equally responsible for creating stakeholder wealth, Business and IT often view the other as an enemy. This site will give you the information to disarm, to bring peace; then change. It’ll give non-partisan insights into what the other is feeling. It’ll help people see passed the comfort of bureaucracy to the riskiness of change.

Don’t wait for the lions to find you. They will; it’s inevitable if you stay where you are. Change. Get moving. Go looking for lions.