[zephen]

On the one hand, I agree.

On the other hand, like a lot of other good ideas, the agile community has claimed this. A quick google will show that many claim it is a "core agile idea."

[dpark]

It’s absolutely an agile idea. The core of agile development is the ability to iterate quickly. Shift left for certain things enables the cycle to shorten and accelerate iteration.

[zephen]

The useful core idea of "shift left" is early collaboration between development and various testing functions.

But, again, that was being done in many organizations (and for sure, in most successful chip companies) well before anything was ever labeled agile.

[dpark]

I agree that it was done by many organizations before “agile” but that’s true of all agile practices. Agile is a philosophy and a collection of tools. None of the tools are new though.

[zephen]

> that’s true of all agile practices

Which is what, honestly, makes the term essentially meaningless.

To the extent that parts of agile are and have always been "best practices" we already had a term for those.