Mastering Agile

Things of interest - simple "trick"

How can we find things of interest about Agile ? How can we master Agile? Here's a trick: let's find out which are the main areas of interest and performance for the authors of Agile Manifesto, the "founding fathers":

(my apologies for possible mistakes)

• Robert C. Martin (initiator of AM) -  Design principles for OOP, Clean Code, Software Craftsmanship Manifesto
• Martin Fowler - Refactoring, Patterns (Architecture, Design, Analysis), UML books, Technical Debt Quadrant
• Kent Beck - XP creator, TDD, jUnit, CRC cards
• Ward Cunningham - Portland Pattern Repository , WikiWikiWeb, the World's first wiki; Technical Debt definition; Also contributor to XP
• Jeff Sutherland - Scrum creator
• Ken Schwaber - Scrum creator
• Ron Jeffries- also founder of XP
• Alistair Cockburn - Effective Use Cases, Crystal methods, PM Declaration of interdependence
• Jim Highsmith - Adaptive Software Development
• Mike Beedle - Scrum consultant , applies Scrum and XP together
• Arie van Bennekum - Dynamic Systems Development Method
• James Grenning - invented Planning Poker
• Andrew Hunt - book author: The Pragmatic Programmer
• Jon Kern - co-authored "Java Design"
• Brian Marick - Agile testing 
• Steve Mellor - contribution to UML extension and MDA
• Dave Thomas - Co-author of  The Pragmatic Programmer 

See also http://agilemanifesto.org/authors.html

Topics by Numbers

Another "trick":  let's count the main themes to see what matters most:

• Software design: 14
• Agile methods & process:  10
• PM: 2
• Agile requirements: 2 

It is pretty simple to master Agile, right? Just learn all these things!

The Story of Agile Manifesto

You can find the full article here:

http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1743276

>>>
InformIT: You were a co-author of the Agile Manifesto in 2001. What drew you to the gathering?

Bob: In 2000 I asked Martin Fowler to lunch to talk about the idea of a "Lightweight Process Summit." We were both part of the Extreme Programming movement, but we had seen that there were several other similar processes, most notably SCRUM, FDD, DSDM, and Crystal. We thought it would be a good idea to get the advocates of all those processes together with other industry leaders to see if there wasn't some way to find and define common ground. I suggested to Martin at the time that we might be able to create some kind of manifesto. He and I put an invitation list together. I composed the invitation and sent it out. After that the process took on a life of its own.

>>> ("Ten Years Of Agile: An Interview with Robert C. "Uncle Bob" Martin")

The idea (and the initiative) of a "Lightweight Process Summit" and of the manifesto that could define the common ground of that kind of movement belong to Robert C. Martin. "Uncle Bob" and Martin Fowler have created also the invitation list... The resulted manifesto is quite outstanding, at least for the ones that have good experience with software development and could serve as guidance for every practitioner.

Yes, we can say that all those methods are "implementing" these principles, but the great thing is that it was first the demonstration: methods and practices resulted from experience and proven to be working. This "theory" (the values and associated principles) are just the abstraction of real experience.

Thank you, Uncle Bob! :)

Note: "The Manifesto of Softwarecraftsmanship" has the same creator.