From the course: Agile Foundations
The agile manifesto: Values
- To better understand the Agile mindset, you have to start by looking at the manifesto for Agile software development or what's commonly called the Agile Manifesto. The Agile Manifesto is a set of statements of four values and 12 principles that are intended to help you embrace an Agile mindset. The first part of the manifesto outlines the values. It reads, "We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work, we have come to value individuals and interactions over processes and tools, working software over comprehensive documentation, customer collaboration over contract negotiation, responding to change over following a plan." That is, while there are value on the items on the right, we value the items on the left more. Notice that these are just the values. The manifesto also includes some principles that we'll go over in another video. An Agile team should have a mindset that's consistent with the values and principles in the Agile Manifesto. So you can think of this as a guide for how to think about your work. To give you a little background, the manifesto was sketched out in a whiteboard back in February of 2001. It was part of a meeting with 17 middle-aged men in a conference room on the ski slopes in Utah. These developers wanted to find a new way for large organizations to deliver software. They wanted to start a revolution against their organization's cumbersome development processes. That's why they use language like manifesto and values. You don't usually hear words like that in business meetings. None of these developers thought that you should give up planning and documentation. They just thought that organizations needed to change their focus. That's why they point out at the end of the manifesto that they put more value on the items on the left than they do value items on the right. Over the years, the Agile Manifesto has become a battle cry for organizational transformation. The manifesto is typically written on a whiteboard or posted on the wall of an Agile team shared workspace. It's important to keep in mind that these values are just designed to show you the big picture. Taken at face value, they're not very actionable. Think about if your manager told you one morning that they wanted you to focus on individuals and interactions, and less on processes and tools. You probably wouldn't know where to start. But that's okay, because the values are not designed to be practical. They're starting points to change the way you think about your work. Even after several decades, the values in the Agile Manifesto still represent radical departure from how most organizations operate. Most organizations still prefer long-term plans and have very cumbersome tools and processes. So when starting your transformation, take a look back to the manifesto and see if these changes are consistent with the Agile values.
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