More than 86% of software development teams have used agile in some form. If you have been meaning to get your head around Agile here is everything you need to know, from the history through to the daily practice.
Where Agile Came From
Agile did not appear from nowhere. It traces back to the Toyota Production System and lean thinking developed decades earlier. Kanban was created at Toyota in 1953. Scrum grew from a 1986 paper called “The New New Product Development Game.” Extreme programming, feature-driven development and several other lightweight frameworks followed.
In 2001, 17 practitioners representing these different approaches came together and agreed on a shared set of values. The result was the Agile Manifesto, which prioritizes individuals and interactions over processes and tools, working software over comprehensive documentation, customer collaboration over contract negotiation and responding to change over following a plan.
Agile Roles
Three roles sit at the center of most agile teams.
The Product Owner represents the customer. They maintain the product backlog, which is a prioritized list of features to be delivered, with the highest-value item always at the top. They are one person, not a committee. They have the final say on what gets worked on next.
The scrum master is a servant leader. They help the team remove blockers, facilitate cere
monies or “events” and protect the team’s focus. They are a neutral third party in problem solving to help unblock the work.
The team does the work. In software that usually means developers, but agile applies equally to research, design and any other knowledge work.
How a Sprint (or Iteration) Works
Work is organized into iterations, typically two weeks long. Here is how one flows from start to finish.
Sprint planning kicks things off. The team selects the highest-priority user stories from the product backlog, enough to fill the sprint based on their velocity. Velocity is simply how many story points the team completed in recent sprints. If the last few averaged 25 points, the next sprint is filled to 25. This keeps the pace sustainable.
Every day the team holds a 15-minute standup around the Kanban board. Each person shares their progress and flags any blockers. The goal is to surface problems quickly so the team can swarm around them and keep moving.
During the sprint, backlog refinement happens in parallel. The three amigos (someone representing the customer, a developer and a tester) come together to break upcoming features into user stories, add acceptance criteria and estimate their size relative to each other.
At the end of the sprint, the team holds a sprint review. A real, usable increment is demonstrated to the customer. Not a presentation. Not a report. The actual thing. The customer gives feedback and the backlog is updated accordingly.
The sprint closes with a retrospective. What went well, what did not and what will improve next time. Actions are agreed and carried into the next sprint.
The 12 Agile Principles
The signatories of the Agile Manifesto later published 12 clarifying principles. They are worth knowing.
- Satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of working software.
- Welcome changing requirements even late in development.
- Deliver working software frequently, with a preference for shorter timescales.
- Business people and developers must work together daily.
- Build teams around motivated individuals and trust them.
- Face-to-face communication is the most efficient way to share information.
- Working software is the primary measure of progress.
- Maintain a sustainable and constant pace.
- Pursue technical excellence and good design continuously.
- Simplicity, maximizing the work not done, is essential.
- The best solutions emerge from self-organizing teams.
- At regular intervals, reflect and adjust.
Agile works because it is built around real feedback, real increments and continuous improvement. Once you understand the logic behind it, the events and the roles all start to make sense.
– David McLachlan
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