Title:
Agile Manifesto 2.0 – shall we slay the sacred cow?

Attending:
15 people

Initiator and Scribe: 
Curtis Michelson

Session Notes:
(see photos of white board)

Conversation Outtakes:

– we started with a collective “moo” sound, and we spoke with appropriate reverence about the “forefathers” who brought us the manifesto.  Acknowledging that what they created has remained relevant and powerful all these years (15 now?) and also realizing that the world they were speaking to (waterfall software development) has largely changed or dissolved. Today, the agile battleground moves to Management and into disciplines outside business per se; such as, education, government, science research, etc.

– As a refresher, we reviewed the current manifesto and principles, then asked what about ‘software’ is hardwired into this document, and what would we need to change to remove that?
Focused on,  “developer” becoming “innovator” or “creator”.  And software becoming “realized business value”.   In the principles we changed “technical excellence” into “excellent craftsmanship” or “high performance”.

– someone noted that there is aready a new manifestation of A.M. called ‘modern agile’.  www.modernagile.org

– they have a beautiful circular graphic that focuses on four synergistic principles:  “Make people awesome”, “Experiment & Learn Rapidly”, “Make Safety A Prerequisite”, and “Deliver Value Continuously”

– Curtis then introduced an “acceptance criteria” for the effectiveness of this new less software specific version:  “we should be able to speak the native language of anyone in organizations – school administrators, government beaurocrats, teachers, preachers, whoever works collaboratively to deliver value to a community.

– As a “test” we focused on “Education”.  Interestingly, some people have already begun to do this, and have taken agile principles into K-12 schools.  One woman said their company had ‘adopted’ a school and was actively working with them to bring kanbans into classrooms.  Others said it would be asesome to have “visibility” even into a classroom. Imagine a trello board that all parents could access and a backlog of items that teachers and students ‘pull’ from.  Whoah!  Others have already brought agile principles into their homes. One woman said they have a scrum board for the house which she calls the “vision board”.

– in the retrospective, everyone came away energized to take agile outside IT and to find places in their community to introduce the potential for greater goods that come from it.