The origins of Agile

While I have written about agile project management techniques before (here), there is always a bit more to explore... and it is fascinating just how clouded the origins of something can become in such a short period of time. 

Agile has been defined as a method "focused on collaboration and frequent communication" (Trumbach et al., 2022, p. 107), formalised via the 'Manifesto for Agile Software Development', which you can read more about at TechTarget (Kirvan & Pratt, 2023). The development of manifesto is down to a group of seventeen software developers, in a ski lodge in Utah.

One history of agile explains via the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) that: "Ken Schwaber [wanted...] to better understand the CMM-based traditional development methods. He approached the scientists at the DuPont Chemical’s Advanced Research Facility posing the question: “Why do the defined processes advocated by CMM not measurably deliver?” [54]. After analyzing the development processes" they found software development was not a "largely unpredictable and unrepeatable" process due to a lack of "Applicable first principles", that processes are being understood on the fly; that processes are complex, and are "changing and unpredictable. Schwaber, who would go on to develop Scrum, realized that to be truly Agile, a process needs to accept change rather than stress predictability" (Cohen et al., 2004, p. 5).

The origin of agile has also been explained as "In 1986", Takeuchi and Nonaka "published an article" which explored "manufacturers that were releasing successful innovations far faster than competitors, the authors identified a team-oriented approach that changed the design and development process for products such as copiers at Fuji-Xerox, automobile engines at Honda, and cameras at Canon. Rather than following conventional 'relay race' methods of product development — in which one group of functional specialists hands off its completed phase to the next functional stage — these companies were using what Takeuchi and Nonaka called a 'rugby' approach, 'where a team tries to go the whole distance as a unit, passing the ball back and forth'" (Rigby et al., 2016, para. 2). 

Further, Abbas et al. (2008)  provide sound evidence detailling a number of early project management processes largely similar to today's agile methods; including those by "Larman and Basili", being "in use as early as 1957", and was "used [in] iterative and incremental approaches in the 1970s" (p. 94). They also touch on the Ken Schwaber story (Cohen et al., 2004), and add two more: that of "Kent Beck, founder of XP, [who] was hired to help Chrysler [with] a payroll system" in 1996 (p. 99); and "Alistair Cockburn, one of the Agile Manifesto authors. In 1991, IBM Consulting Group asked him to write a methodology for object technology projects" (p. 100).

I presume that someone will eventually write up the history of Agile as a PhD thesis.

Sam

References:

Abbas, N., Gravell, A. M., & Wills, G. B. (2008). Historical Roots of Agile Methods: Where Did “Agile Thinking” Come From? In P. Abrahamsson, R. Baskerville, K. Conboy, B. Fitzgerald, L. Morgan, X. Wang, (Eds.), Proceedings of the Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming (Vol. 9, pp. 94-103). Springer Science & Business Media.

Brosseau, D., Ebrahim, S., Handscomb, C., & Thaker, S. (2019, May). The journey to an agile organization. McKinsey and Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Business%20Functions/Organization/Our%20Insights/The%20journey%20to%20an%20agile%20organization/The-journey-to-an-agile-organization-final.ashx

Cohen, D., Lindvall, M., & Costa, P. (2004). An introduction to agile methods. Advanced Computing, 62(03), 1-66. http://robertfeldt.net/courses/agile/cohen_2004_intro_to_agile_methods.pdf

Kirvan, P., & Pratt, M. K. (2023, April). Agile Manifesto. TechTarget. https://www.techtarget.com/searchcio/definition/Agile-Manifesto

Rigby, D. K., Sutherland, J., & Takeuchi, H. (2016). The secret history of agile innovation. Harvard Business Review, 4. H02RBB-PDF-ENG. http://media.loft.io.s3.amazonaws.com/attachments/The_Secret_History_of_Agile_Innovation.pdf

Trumbach, C. C., Walsh, K. R., & Mahesh, S. (2022). A Historical and Bibliometric Analysis of the Development of Agile. In Information Resources Management Association (Ed.), Research Anthology on Agile Software, Software Development, and Testing (pp. 107-121). IGI Global.