Many people in the software engineering and project management fields are familiar with Agile, but few know its origins. In this blog post, we’ll take a brief look at the history of Agile and how it has become the go-to methodology for many organizations.
As PCs became more widespread in organizations in the early 90s software engineering faced a barrier. In the past, people called the situation an application development crisis. Initially, organizations estimated 3 years between validated business needs and actual application in production. It’s just a business thing. Even then the economy grew faster by 3 years. In a three-year period your business requirements, systems, or entire business could change.
Brief History of Agile
Industries were Frustrated with the Waterfall Approach
Many industries have expressed frustration with the waterfall method of implementing it. Over the years, many software developers began planning a new approach. Jon Kern is a frustrated thinking leader who became actively seeking a solution that was “timely and scalable”. Jon Kern gathers with his team of 17 programmers in Portland’s Portland office. They were brainstorming on ways to speed up the development process so that more developers could quickly get on the scene.
A Change is Underway: The History of Agile Takes Shape
Many software development teams were frustrated with the state of technology in the 1990s. During this period development methods have been introduced including rapid app development, Extreme programming, DSDM FeatureDriven Development and Pragmatic. However, the most commonly encountered is a lighter-weight design that allows more flexibility in design and less overhead. Historically, this approach in software development led to a new approach in the history of Agile which is still today.
Agile was born out of frustration with the traditional waterfall methodology, which tended to be inflexible and bureaucratic. In 2001, a group of 17 software developers got together in Snowbird, Utah to discuss ways to improve the software development process. From this meeting, the Agile Manifesto was born. This document outlined 12 principles that would shape the way agile software development would be approached in the future.
A manifesto is born: Agile comes into focus
A few months after that Oregon meet Agile exploded with the same 17 development teams meeting again at Snowbird Ski Resort. The participants wished to improve their progress and come up with more concrete solutions for the biggest developmental problems. In just 3 days they released the Agile manifesto. This manifesto represents an important turning point in agile history and outlines four fundamental values which are important for Agile, but they haven’t stopped there yet.
A New Ideology is Born: The History of Agile Manifesto
After the Oregon meeting, Jon Kern and 17 developers from the group of developers met in Utah in 2001 at Snowbird. The meeting also discussed ways of developing more effective strategies for addressing development problems. The Agile group had already created the Agile Manifesto in less than two days and called it the Agile Manifesto. The document outlined four values, and the agile team never stopped representing these five values.
Despite being at the Snowbird summit in February 2001, Agile’s trajectory was still just beginning. After three days of meetings, 17 leader groups were ready to tackle the next chapter in agile history.
Agile is gaining steam
As Agile was starting to take off around 2000, it gained momentum during the 2010 – 2011 cycle. In this era Agile has become a commonly shared story for development teams. However, real-life performance indicators began to accompany these stories from 2012 to 2015. Because Agile has demonstrated success, it is unclear why the lightweight approach is a good choice today. Shortly afterward Agile began to expand, albeit without extending beyond the realm of development.
The 17 individuals who formulated the Agile Manifesto were: Ward Cunningham, Ken Schwaber, Jeff Sutherland, Mike Beedle, Arie van Bennekum, Andrew Hunt, Ron Jeffries, Jon Kern, Brian Marick, Robert C. Martin, Steve Mellor, Dave Thomas, and James Walden.
Who is the founder of Agile?
Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland founded the Scrum framework in early 1990 in order to assist organizations in solving complicated development issues. As an advisor in 2001, he was also the founder of the Agile Alliance Scrum Alliance.
Jeff Sutherland was born June 20, 1941, and has worked as an author on the Scrum Framework. Together with Ken Schwaber, they presented Scrum at OOPSLA 1995. Sutherland helped create the AgileManifesto in 2001. He is also the author of “Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time”.
Ken Schwaber co-founded the Agile Alliance, Scrum Alliance, and Agile Open. He is a signatory of the Agile Manifesto. Ken has written several books on scrum including “Agile Project Management with Scrum”.
What is OOPSLA 1995?
The Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages & Applications Conference is the premier international conference for practitioners, researchers, and educators in the field of object technology. Every year since 1986, OOPSLA has brought together a broad cross-section of the computing community to explore these ideas. Attendees include programmers, analysts, designers, educators, tool vendors, and researchers. OOPSLA is sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Programming Languages (ACM SIGPLAN).
Agile has come a long way since its inception in 2001. What started as a small group of developers discussing ways to improve the software development process has grown into a widely used methodology with a strong track record of success. Agile is constantly evolving, and its values of flexibility, collaboration, and customer focus continue to make it an attractive choice for development teams looking to build high-quality software quickly and efficiently.