Manifesto for Agile Software Development — Would it remain the same after lockdown?

Originally written on 19th April, 2020

After Covid-19 pandemic hit the world, things are no longer the same. With lockdown across and within countries, states, cities, the entire world is at standstill; no traffic, no pubs, no malls, no social gathering.

On the other side, if we look at the IT world, it continues to run, as is and in many cases, more aggressively with improved outcome. The only difference is that everything is remote. Work From Home is no longer seen as a special request or a taboo.

Organizations now understand that remote working is as effective as working from office. Huge thanks to the IT-Ops departments of organizations for making this possible with the help of sophisticated tools.

It’s important to look back and check if the Agile values, that we learnt and inherited from the Agile Manifesto, still hold command with the same vision and meaning.

Here’s what I see in the four value statements —

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

With the newer video conferencing tools, instant messaging apps, project management platforms, it is very easy for teams to communicate in a group or one-on-one in private. The tools have now given a voice to the introverts as well where they can write their views and get the responses. However, important point to note is that — “Interactions are only possible because of tools”.

Working Software over comprehensive documentation

Releasing software to the customer has not been impacted much due to the immensely powerful end to end services that cloud computing companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, Google provide.

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

As in the first value statement, tools can now enable customers as well to be present virtually and provide detailed requirements, any feedback, reach out to the business owners, business analysts, etc. Being available for the customer is much easier now without transportation costs and other logistics involved. This has now become much more cost effective for the customer as well as the business owners. Also, this has brought in another dimension of global customers without the necessity to travel and meet personally.

Responding to change over following a plan

From being “Social” to now “Social Distancing ” is in itself a big leap for the human society. Being ready to any changes would be the new attitude for businesses. Accepting that “Change is the only reality” would now be embraced by organizations and customers which would empower them to respond with solutions which might have never been prepared.

The essence of the Agile Manifesto still stays the same. But, this change will certainly result into increased acceptance towards the values as people will now be more:

• humble

• empathetic

• truthful

• ready to welcome change

It’s hard to even forecast what is likely to happen. With every disruption, comes out a lot of opportunities and innovations. Things would get clearer and take shape as we move forward and win the war against “The Invisible” aka. Corona.