| FWIW, I don't take the manifesto or the principles behind it literally for many of the same reasons you hint at. My attitude when looking strictly at agile doctrine is a mix of skepticism (especially after having learned and practiced agile for around 15 years now) and thinking, "Hummm...they might be onto something..." I don't often criticize the written word of how people try to describe agile, but instead try to understand "what were they trying to say?" A point of illumination for me as to which parts of agile I was most interested in developing a deeper practical knowledge of, happened after I watched a few documentaries on Skunkworks, and how that group operated. Robert Kelly's 14 Rules and Practices does (to me) have a lot of conceptual similarities with the manifesto, especially when you see how they were practiced on some of the most difficult technical challenges humans have ever faced: http://lockheedmartin.com/us/aeronautics/skunkworks/14rules.... I think that if someone were to pin me down and say "Tell me the doctrine you follow!!!!" and I was forced at gunpoint to give a simple single answer I would point to Kelly's 14 Rules over the manifesto. A deeply unfortunate fact of the agile's history is that the C3 system wasn't really very successful by just about any dimension: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Comprehensive_Compens... I've been told by many of Agile Manifesto acolytes that the C3 project's less-than-stellar results don't matter, but I personally think it does. At a minimum, at least you can point to Kelly's Skunkworks team, and see how they shaped modern history with their inventions and ability to deliver improbable solutions on an impossible schedule. In summary, where Kelly's 14 and the Agile Manifesto & Principles conceptually overlap, I believe there is much worth learning. |
OTOH, Agile principles are high level enough that they may provide a framework for thinking about methodology, but aren't really actionable in any unambiguous way.