A New Agile Manifesto?

Brian Marick makes some great points here about things that are important to agile development, but weren't the first order of business when our major concern was getting permission to do it. If the default is that agile is acceptable, Brian points out that it's essential to understand what teams need to execute agile processes successfully.

Brian's pulls are "Skill, Disciple, Ease and Joy". Parts of this resonate with something I've said to plenty of people - too many software developers consider pain to be part of their jobs. I've seen some terrible things done and excused with "it's always hard", or "it has to be that way". For change to occur, we first need to see the potential for something better ("it shouldn't hurt like this"), and then we need to be able to envision that better thing (which requires skill). And the result is frequently things that are easier to use for everyone.

The joy thing is going to be even harder though. Programmers seem to have an habit of finding someone else to blame for their pain, rather than looking closely at themselves. If you don't believe me, go read some Dilbert. Dilbert's problems are caused by Catbert, by PHB, sometimes by Wally, and he's generally the good natured, innocent bystander. Now these characters are intentionally caricatures, and I don't want to stretch the analogy too far, but I think they capture the software development zeitgeist. We'd do better if we stopped seeing ourselves as victims, and involved ourselves in finding solutions to the problems we see, especially the ones that impact us! If you think your boss is making stupid decisions, make it your business to understand their perspective on the decision - maybe you're not even looking at the same problems!

Anyway, Brian says things better than I can right now, so go read his blog.