How we got here, part 2

Manifesto for Agile Software Development

We are uncovering better ways of developing
software by doing it and helping others do it.
Through this work we have come to value:

Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools

Working Software over Comprehensive Documentation

Customer Collaboration over Contract Negotiation

Responding to Change over Following a Plan

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.

It took 31 years for people to stand up and recognize this wasn't working. In 1970, a group of forward thinkers met and discussed better ways of generating software products. This was a great step forward if only because it realized that we:

• Cannot know, at a product level, what we need to do up front

• Cannot read the minds of our customers nor accurately predict how they'll respond to change

• "Bundle it up and throw it over the wall" (aka Telephone Game) isn't a good way to communicate

• Plans have to change and we should have a plan to handle such changes

Unfortunately, they again wrote this in English (the most ambiguous grammar on the planet), so 1,000,000 people reading it took away 1,000,000 different meanings. And nowhere was there an explanation as to WHY and under what conditions to favor the left side vs the right.