Winning With Agile

So do we consider ourselves agilists? Yes! All WSA’s people are actively involved in the agile community, from promoting agile through local user groups, and agile conferences, to developing agile methods and practices, even to researching agile. The Agile movement provides a shared common focal point for our ideas of how we believe software should be created.

However, we may not quite see or promote “Agile” the same way that some do. Some tend to equate agile only with the adoption of specific light-weight software development and project management practices, often asking “are you agile?” We strongly believe this is the wrong question. Some agile projects succeed, and some agile projects fail. Clearly agile cannot be a means to itself. The question we like to ask is “are you winning?”

Agile is a truly refreshing idea and the Agile movement grabbed people because it acknowledges software development is primarily a social process. Barry Boehme, one of the great patriarchs of software engineering stated

“Personnel attributes and human relations activities provide by far the largest source of opportunity for improving software productivity”

One of our colleagues summed it up simply as:

“Happy people, happy software”

Agile is about practices that encourage effective social interaction between those involved in software creation and delivery. Just look at the first declaration of the agile manifesto “individuals and interactions over processes and tools” Unfortunately some use the agile manifesto and agile principles to define agility only in terms of light weight practices and tools. In our opinion at WSA, agile is a broader concept and encompasses much more than practices and tools, it is an effective strategy for winning.

Success through agility may be a concept that is well over 2,500 years old dating back to the days to the military philosopher Sun Tzu. Modern day organizations such as Toyota, Southwest Airlines, General Electric, and even the United States Marine Corps exploit agility as a winning strategy. The bad news is the software community is late to the party. The good news is, there are many organizations we can learn from if we are open to learning their lessons.

A very powerful and useful definition of agility comes from United States Air Force pilot, engineer, and strategist, Colonel John Boyd’s master work “A Discourse on Winning and Losing” which explained agility as a time based strategy for winning. At WSA our view of agility is influenced by Colonel Boyd’s model because of the broad and powerful implications it has for software development:

1. Agility is a time based strategy for winning and is not based on size. Small and large teams, co-located teams, near located or even large globally distributed teams can use agility as a winning strategy. It’s not about size, it’s about time. This is why are motto is “winning with agile…for all”
2. Agility is a relative concept, not an absolute concept. Boyd’s definition of agility depends on the quickness and quality of a decision making process relative to the quickness of an adversary. Applied to software development, this means agility is our ability to respond and exploit change more quickly than it is occurring.
3. Agility depends on organizational culture (trust, cooperation, focus). Organizational success is still about people, perhaps even more so with knowledge intensive industries like software development.

From Colonel Boyd’s work, we at WSA believe agility is about creating a winning software engineer culture by discovering, promoting and integrating social and technical practices that reduce friction. This is why at WSA we don’t ask if you are agile, we ask if you are winning.