Implementing Agile Values and Principles: Chapter 6
A few years ago I wrote Understanding Agile Values and Principles (https://www.infoq.com/minibooks/agile-values-principles/). I’m working on a follow-up book about implementing them entitled Implementing Agile Values and Principles. I will post draft parts of the book on Medium.com as I finish them. I would certainly be interested in hearing people’s opinions about the draft material which I will certainly consider in making revisions as I work toward the final version.
This post is the draft of the 6th chapter introducing Agile Principles.
Chapter 6 — The Principles
I noted in Chapter 1, that “Dave Thomas had suggested even the Manifesto principles might seem prescriptive and mislead people into believing they must do certain things.” I suppose you could look at them in that way though the “prescriptiveness” is very general. It doesn’t name any roles or meetings or deliverables that you find in various Agile frameworks. I do know that people have read some of them and concluded they do imply how they should properly be implemented.
For example, there is this principle: “The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.” People have said (certainly pre-COVID) that Agile cannot be done with distributed teams since people cannot be face-to-face. It is true the intent was people physically together; however, while not as “efficient and effective” as physically face-to-face, distributed environments and tools available today certainly make an Agile approach possible.
Alistair Cockburn has said that “While the Values of the Manifesto are the heart of what an Agile approach means, by themselves, they would not be enough to know what to do to implement such an approach.”
Using the Shu-Ha-Ri approach to learning, we can view the variety of Agile practices (and frameworks) as Shu (beginner) level ideas because they tell people what and how to do things. Kent Beck calls this “Do everything as written.” The principles can be viewed as Ha (experienced) levels ideas because, as Kent Beck says, “experiment with variations in the rules.” The values can be viewed as Ri (expert) level ideas because they are, as Alistair put it, almost “zen-like” ideas. They can leave a Shu level person wondering, “Yeah but what do I do.” At the Ri level, you work in such a smooth flow that, as Kent Beck says, you “don’t care if you are doing XP or not.” That is, you don’t care what you call what you do, and you easily apply different ideas to what you do without the need to name them or even think too consciously about how you do them.
Years ago, researchers were trying to understand how experts do what they do and one group they interviewed were chess masters. It was difficult for the chess masters to clearly delineate how they understood a chess position and saw moves far ahead. However, some managed to explain their thinking after some effort. Following up with these people some time later, the chess masters noted how, for a while, they had trouble playing at their former level of skill. They were now very (self-)conscious of their thinking which slowed them down and interfered with their “flow.” They did manage to lose that barrier and get back to their former state, but the experience did support the idea of expertise occurring in unconscious flow.
Practices, therefore, are an entry point for people new to Agile ideas. They are clear so everyone can tell if they are being carried out or not. Recall, however, that the Manifesto starts with “We are uncovering,” not “We have uncovered.” It is not a static view but one which expects and encourages new practices.
Principles, in a sense, connect practices to values as the two are so very different in their specificity. Understanding the principles helps people see why they are doing practices. They offer reasons for doing the practices. They can also help people consider alternative practices that still meet the ideas represented by the principles. While technologies change and experience grows, principles last over time
Values, on the other hand, offer fundamental concepts that find their way into all the principles and practices. Without them, practices, and even principles, might become rote behaviors and thinking with no “spirit,” no motivation behind them.
[Ideas about a change to the Manifesto principle’s statements can be found in the Appendices.]
Some authors of the Manifesto and early practitioners of Agile ideas have suggested things they might have been done differently both in the Manifesto and how they promoted it.
For example, Chet Hendrickson has said “we should have taught a process to try lots of things, not a set of practices.” He also said, “We were on the far end of the excellence spectrum, but …thought what we did was what everybody could do.” He also mentioned that by offering answers instead of how to find answers they did a disservice. People should “experiment to see what works,” then that is what you should do.” Practices were presented because that’s what these early practitioners did and did well, feeling others could do so if the practices were presented to them. “However,” he said” many people may have never seen what really good looks like.” Thus they had a hard time relating to what early extreme programmers could do and encouraged as practices.
In removing the 12 principles and just leaving the four values, Dave Thomas also said, “I would make the manifesto just that one page and then possibly just because it may not be obvious to people, explain why.” (When I went to my first Agile conference (ADC 2004 and a couple after that), attendance was small compared to later years (i.e., 300 people compared to 2000+). Almost all the authors of the Manifesto would be there. I was a great opportunity to talk to them about the values and principles. Much of UAVP was inspired by hearing their “why” answers.)
