Tag Archives: Agile Manifesto

How values create change from small networks to large

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These are notes from my presentation at the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) #45.

I’ll link to my full paper when it is available and to subsequent posts as I publish them.

Agile values, product innovation and the shortage of women software developers Part 7 of 7

(44) Agile values in an enterprise context

I’ve described two examples of how Agile principles call upon practitioners to battle hostile workplaces. My paper has several more. But let’s talk about how Agile teams instill Agile values into the enterprise. As a development team matures impediments become consistently rooted in the surrounding organization. Continuous improvement becomes an effort directed out into the larger company. Where an organization fails to support a team adopting an agile practice, the teams needs to drive for these changes in the organization by first building trust and influence by producing results in spite of their impediments and then using that success to win support for removing the obstacles that lay in their path.

(45) A principled Agile enterprise

In response the larger organization will begin removing impediments to team performance by, for example, adopting a retrospective type review process, rewarding collective over individual performance, compensating for span of influence over span of control.

(46) How values create change from small networks to large

But how can small change within companies produce large order changes across an industry or society?

(46) Ba

To model this, I’ll use Nonaka’s concept of Ba, or “a shared context in motion, in which knowledge is shared, created and utilized[65].” Sectors that thrive off innovation do so by sharing knowledge across direct and extended-relationships among people. Each set of relationships exists within a physical or virtual space. Each of these spaces at any given moment in time is Ba.

(47) Ba in knowledge work

Knowledge workers interact within their local communities, interest groups. They graduate from school and change jobs. Companies are distributed across locales. Consultants travel among companies and conferences bring individuals together from across the industry. In sharing, creating and synthesizing knowledge one Ba influences the other, fostering change on the small scale to the large and back. The broad adoption of Agile practices is itself an example of knowledge occurring first within individuals and teams and then spreading across an industry.

(48) The challenge

But widespread Agile adoption has been a mixed blessing for principled agilists. Agile values are not permeating as well as the practices themselves. To invert Alistair Cockburn’s dictum, the industry is valuing agile practices over agile principles.

(49) Snowbird

This threat is on the minds of prominent Agile thought leaders. Enough so that the notes from the 10 year reunion of the initials signers of the Agile Manifesto contains “four things the community needs to do in the next 10 years”: demand technical excellence, promote individual change and lead organizational change, organize knowledge and improve education, and maximize value across the entire process[66].

(50) Conclusion

Agile is not about doing “Agile” things. It is about continually improving ourselves, our teams and our organizations to create better software for our customers and our end users. If we embrace that on a wide scale, we will recognize we are driving away an incredibly valuable source of talent and an incredibly valuable contribution in our effort to create products relevant to over half of our end users. We can use the principles underlying Agile practice to guide our efforts to remove this impediment.. Successful embrace of agile principles within teams will instill a more social and engaged view of the software developer role that can shift companies and the larger industry, driving beneficial change into academic institutions and the perceptions of the greater public. This change in our workplaces, in the common perception of our work, and in the institutions that educate software developers would encourage more girls to pursue computer science and help the industry recruit and retain larger numbers of talented women.

Thank you.

All slides.

Previous: Antidote the diving catch culture of heroics and privileged roles

There is abundant research on the problems women face in our field. I would love researchers to jump in on whether Agile principles and Agile practioners can really make a difference.

I’d also love any suggestions of organizations, institutions and individuals I might reach out to for more information, collaboration, or to take up the cause.

Please comment on my proposal to Agile 2012.

The full citation list for my paper.

Working on a paper about women in software development

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dandelionI just submitted a paper on agile values and the underrepresentation of women in software development.

This is not an original topic but the research I’ve read has focused on how women who participate in agile practices, particularly XP pair programming have more favorable impressions of the work and of their ability to contribute both of which are correlated to entering the occupation.1,2

My belief is that agile practices are tools but it is the agile values that give us the urgency, courage and insight to wield those tools towards a desired outcome.

That is, we are much more capable of making software development more tolerant and inviting of diversity if we believe we should do this as part of our core mission as Agilists to develop with craft and quality and to deliver value to our employers and our end users (do not forget).

So, the rough outline of my paper is this:

  • The shortage of women entering software development and disproportionate share of women leaving mid-career is real and measurable and well documented.
  • The problem is worse in IT than it is in almost all other areas of STEM because, unusually, the percentage of women in software development has actually declined over the last 20 years.
  • This shortage and particularly the attrition of experienced women developers represents a material burden to our industry.
  • Product teams that represent the diversity of their customers have a potential advantage in developing products that appeal to that diverse customer base
  • Women are at least the equals of men when it comes to influencing consumer technology spending and online activity
  • Therefore, it is in the interest of the industry to educate, recruit and retain women developers
  • Agile is a collection of practices united by a coherent set of principles
  • As agile becomes mainstream it is more important than ever that practitioners understand and embody these principles
  • The creators of the Agile Manifesto realize this and are calling us to a principled approach to our work
  • These principles are at stake when it comes to things that affect the competitiveness, insight into end users, and potential for innovation in our teams
  • If we engage our agile practices behind this principled cause we can begin to remove the impediments within our own organizations to the recruitment and retention of women
  • When we do, we will influence larger changes across the industry, within education and in society

I’ll go into more detail and try to defend my arguments in later posts. In the meantime, I’m happy to engage with anyone who finds fault in my premise.


1S. Berenson and K. Slaten. “Voices of women in a software engineering course” in JERIC, vol. 4.1, Mar. 2004.

2O. Hazzan and Y. Dubinsky. “Empower Gender Diversity with Agile Software Development” in Encyclopedia of Gender and Information Technology. E. Taugh, Ed. Hershey, PA: IGI-Global, 2006, pp 249-256.

Agile software development: business value and human values

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I’ve written about agile software development as an ongoing, perhaps excruciatingly gradual, conversation on the definition of value.

We need a place at the conference table. But we also need a forum and language to discuss the human values behind the way we aspire to work.

“… I’ve got to have more experience with junior [children] than a lot of the people who are telling me what I should be doing with them… I think I could help bring a lot to it and nobody ever asks…They just go ahead and proclaim and we have to follow.” -– Anonymous Teacher

This quote is from a study on the failure of education reform movements, called What’s Worth Fighting for in Your School?, by Andy Hargreaves & Michael Fullan.

Reform often fails because reformers don’t engage individual contributors in the goals. Rather, they impose practices upon them. The attempt to improve the classroom actually makes the teacher less effective and sets them against reform.

Sound familiar?

Cape Kiwanda, Pacific City, OregonThe landscape of broken agile adoptions is composed of attempts to make software development “faster, cheaper, better” without embracing the experience and creativity of our core asset, the software developer.

We need to focus a little less on specific practices and a little more on building consensus among our peers over a shared set of values which despite human fallibility and economic necessity inspire us to do good work.

The Manifesto for Agile Software Development is an attempt by thought leaders to capture these principles. As with all documents, it is an artifact of a moment created to address that moment’s opportunities and constraints.

If we take the “Manifesto” as terms and conditions, something to read and sign before we advance to practice then we glide over the surface of things. It’s not what was written but why people felt the need to write it.

If we take the “Manifesto” as a complete expression, then as happens with codes of ethics, we will use its silence on certain concerns and nuance in the interpretation words themselves to excuse actions by others and even justify the harm we do ourselves.

The “Manifesto”, as with any other artifact in agile, is simply a reminder to have a conversation.

Martin Fowler discussing gender disparities in the industry:

How about a community where women are valued for their ability to program and not by the thickness of their skin? How about a community that edgily pushes new boundaries without reinforcing long running evils?

Bob Martin lobbying to add a fifth principle to the Manifesto itself:

“We value craftsmanship over execution” (or “craftsmanship over crap”)

But the discussion isn’t between thought leaders. It involves every practitioner.

We are here to create long-term value. To build businesses, careers and an industry. This is a labor of years not the current iteration.

If your concerns are entirely short term, then there are less disingenuous ways to extract wealth from people’s effort than to claim you are “agile”.

If you are agile, then you are accountable to the creativity and well-being of the teams with whom you collaborate. You are accountable for the security of end users and the benefit they derive from the software you create.

We are not tools. We are knowledge workers. What we create carries with it the way it was created. What we create is in some profound way us.