From the course: Agile Foundations

The agile manifesto: Principles

From the course: Agile Foundations

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The agile manifesto: Principles

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- [Instructor] The four values in the Agile Manifesto were jotted down on the whiteboard during the meeting in Utah. After that meeting, the 17 signers of the Agile Manifesto emailed back and forth to interpret these values. They knew that these four values on their own wouldn't be enough to start their revolution. So over the course of a few months, they started to list out 12 guiding principles for the manifesto. These principles are actually much closer to what people think about when they imagine Agile development. It's in these principles that you start to see the first rumblings of common Agile roles and practices. Principle two is about welcoming changes when you're working in your cone of uncertainty. Principles three and seven refer to continuous software delivery in weeks as a measure of progress. That's why most Agile teams deliver in short iterations called sprints. Principle four describes how customers should work closely with the development team. Later on, you'll see a role called the product owner. This is commonly a customer representative who sits with the team and guides them as they deliver the product. Principles five and 11 talk about motivated self-organized teams. That's why most Agile teams are cross-functional and self-organized. They should be small teams of generalists that work together to deliver the product. That's usually a big change from how most organizations operate. Most teams have a representative from each of the company's functional areas, so developers will develop software, and then testers will test the result. Agile team members usually try to do a little bit of both. Principle six describes the importance of face-to-face conversations. That's why many Agile teams write user stories instead of writing out long requirements documents. These user stories encourage the team to have many face-to-face conversations. It's like a sticky note that reminds you to have a future conversation with someone else on the team. Principles 1, 8, 9, and 10 start to introduce you to the idea of prioritizing high value work. An Agile team will use something like a product backlog. It's here where the product owner will identify what the customer values the most. The product owner will work with the team to simplify this functionality into something that can be delivered in a short sprint. Finally, principle 12 encourages the team to meet frequently to discuss process improvement. That's why most Agile teams have a retrospective. Typically, it's at the end of every sprint. This is when the team has a face-to-face meeting to think of ways to improve their collaboration. As you can see, these manifesto principles really fill in a lot of what was left to your imagination when you only had four Agile values. That's why you should think of the values in the manifesto as big picture ideas, but it's actually the 12 principles in the manifesto that start to lay some of the groundwork for what your team will actually do to deliver great products.

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