Retrospective On the State of Agile
The year is 2020. In the course of the past twenty years, the Agile movement has become a complex ecosystem.
Some of the authors of the original Agile Manifesto prefer that the term “Agile” be used as an adjective, but the fact is that it has become a noun. There was and still is an “Agile movement,” there is an “Agile community,” and the meaning of “Agile” – with a capital “A” – refers to that community and its culture and to the movement, as well as to the Agile Manifesto which, although its internet location is at AgileManifesto.org, is actually titled, “Manifesto for Agile Software Development.”
As for any movement, it makes sense to retrospect on its progress. The retrospective that we performed revealed a number of problems with the current state of Agile. Those problems are described by the problems linked under each principle. As it turned out, our retrospective strongly aligned with the ten year retrospective performed by the British Computer Society, even though we did not read that prior to our own retrospective; so not much has actually changed!
Our problems and insights, along with some guidance, are provided here.