(2025-01-06) Heusser Agile Alliance Pmi Partnership

Matt Heuser: Agile Alliance and PMI Partnership? Too long/did not read version:

• The people-people took over the label Agile, as they do.
• The Sound Craftspeople, as always, have work to do.
• It’s time for us to get back to work.

Matt’s Background on The Agile Manifesto

The late 1990’s were a different time for software. The internet didn’t really exist in it’s current form. There were not a lot of opportunities for people to share practices that were actually working. The loudest voices in the software room were talking about the three c’s: Complete, Consistent, and Correct requirements

Waterfall Model de facto ruled the roost, back before you could download it as a PDF and read for yourself that Royce said it did not work for complex projects … in 1976

Many technical staff had lost the confidence of leadership, at least partially because of the inherent problems in the Waterfall[1]. The technical people just could not keep their promises, they could not hit deadlines. (I was one of those technical people, and it was true. Now where, exactly, those deadlines came from, that I never really figured out.) This loss of confidence spawned an entire group of people to act as go-betweens for the people building the software and the customer. (process people, people-people)

The “Snowbird conference” was a weekend when seventeen software experts got together to write up something about their shared values, which at the time were loosely grouped around “Lightweight Methods.”

Brian Marick, one of the signatories of the Manifesto, once explained to me that you could think of the Manifesto as a conversation between those who actually understood how to develop software and the people-people. It might go something like this:”Please get out of the way. Let us talk to the customer directly, and trust us to build the software. We know how to do it.” The two main supportive methodologies at Snowbird were Scrum and XP. Both contained the idea of frequent, shippable-software, visible progress

The other interesting trick in the Agile Manifesto was the marketing bit. It was specifically written to be directly counter to the loudest voices in the SoftwareDevelopmentIntellectualOSphere, the ones focused on comprehensive process documentation and contract negotiation.

a few years later, when I put a poster up that showed the Agile Manifesto, one of the PMI-PMPs in the building walked by and said out loud “This offends me.”
That was 2006, three years after I signed the Manifesto in 2003, and four since I read my first XP book, XP:Installed.

The good news is, whatever the background, the stuff actually worked[2], at least on small projects

I remember one employer who told me “We are going to let you do your thing on this project. Just don’t tell anyone what you are doing.” This struck me as an implicit admission that the techniques worked – but the organization could not recognize that fact, even if individuals in management could. I left a little while later.

Then, slowly, something happened.

Agile became the status quo.*

Companies started hiring Scrum Masters. Certification and coaching businesses took off. To the extent they offered real education, I wish them every success

But wait, you ask. If Agile is suddenly so popular, how can that be bad?

In his book Secrets of Consulting, Jerry Weinberg sums it up as his “Law of Raspberry Jam.”[3] That is, “The Wider you spread it, the thinner it gets. (cf peanut butter)

when an idea becomes popular: A different group of people come in, the second-order consultants. These people did not pick Agile because it was a great way to develop software. They picked it because it was easy to sell, or easy to get them a job, or the path of least resistance.

Remember those executives who wanted to make up deadlines that were firm?

Those executives had, at first, complained that Agile didn’t Scale.

The new crop of consultants came in and said:

“Scaling? Yeah, sure, we can do that.”

Ward Cunningham’s C2 Wiki got a “Big Agile Up Front” anti-pattern added to its list.

Someone explained to me that there was a market for a “big box of agile” that allowed one to have the Agiles and Eat waterfall too, and that if there was demand, someone would come to sell it

DevOps and Code-as-Craft began as technical offshoots from Agile Software, and over the years, the Agile Conference had less and less technical material. This was, in some ways, a never-ending doom loop.

Coaching became a career and skill that was away from the code. Thus, to make more money in the Agiles, one gets away from the technical work, and becomes a Scum Master, or a Coach, or a Manager.

Then, this week, the big news. The Agile Alliance “joined” the PMI, something between being acquired, merging, and partnering

The one thing we do know, though, is the very organization the manifesto was created to critique is now the stewarded by the organization it meant to reform.

There is a possible explanation for this, something called a “Hegelian Synthesis.”

I have one problem with his statement.
It’s crap.
He is wrong.

The Agile Manifesto was opposed to something. Something real. The people-people who did not understand software had taken over software long ago, in the 1980’s and 1990’s. The manifesto took ground from them.

For some reason, the institution dedicated to advancing that mission seems to have given the ground back.

Let’s look at why.

The rumormill on linkedin seems to be that the Agile Alliance has funding problems, with a goal to fund 18 major initiatives

Despite this, when I dig into the financials, I see that the agile conference is becoming more expensive and bringing in less revenue

There are solutions to this, most notably zero-based budgeting. Overhaul the events, from top to bottom. Run basic IT services – a website, membership, access to some web based databases. Have the board meet over zoom. Run the conference profitably.

It is possible the conference has multi-year contracts to run in locations where it cannot run profitably

If that were true, it sounds like a heck of a case study in the risks of Big Design Up Front, and a wonderful conversation for us to have as a community

Instead of having the tough conversation, the Agile Alliance joined the PMI.

we have in fact moved the needle a little. I’ll give the tiniest bit of credit there.

the people at the “XP conference” and the “Agile Universe” were a ragtag band of ruffians that weren’t having much impact, while the AA did become a force to be taken seriously.

Sadly, the “Stories, Standups, and Sprints” don’t help much in a traditional project management paradigm.

In C.S. Lewis’s speech “the inner ring“, he describes all I had ever hoped to be as an engineer:
If in your working hours you make the work your end, you will presently find yourself all unawares inside the only circle in your profession that really matters.
This group of craftsmen will by no means coincide with the Inner Ring or the Important People or the People in the Know.
But it will do those things which that profession exists to do and will in the long run be responsible for all the respect which that profession in fact enjoys and which the speeches and advertisements cannot maintain.