Jeff 'Cheezy' Morgan Presents The Future of Agile at ADC/BSC East
Jeff Morgan—better known by his nickname, “Cheezy”—took to the ballroom stage at the Agile Development Conference & Better Software Conference East 2014 to kick off the second day of keynote presentations and developmental sessions.
Morgan, CTO and cofounder of Lean Dog, began his presentation “The Future of Agile: Dilution, Calcification, or Evolution?” by introducing the foundation of agile and establishing an idea of its future. The overarching message Morgan communicated is that things change, and in order to succeed from one decade into the next, you need to adapt and grow with the times.
Morgan dove into the Agile Manifesto and explained the start of the agile mindset. He went over the four tenets of agile in order to illustrate that many organizations engaging in agile practices have lost track of what it really means to be agile.
He polled the audience to ask if anyone thought the software industry is living up to the original ideas and visions for the agile methodology. No one raised a hand to show agreement.
Morgan offered some solace by explaining that some of the principles of agile being lost in the flow of today’s current business schemes is not the fault of agile practitioners or the people who make the software world run from day to day. Instead, it’s the fault of the companies who have placed a focus on things outside the agile mindset.
With that comfort given, Morgan quickly stole it back by suggesting that many of us are fooling ourselves into thinking that we are agile. He explained that the point of agile is to get better and to take the efforts of the software community to the next level. This is where today’s ideas of best practices fail us.
Best practices aren’t actually best practices because they lock people into thinking they are doing the best job possible. They stop looking to do better and innovate. They stop approaching problems from radical and new ways. Falling into the trap of best practices isn’t agile.
With all of that being said, Morgan offered his forecast for the future. The well-defined roles we have held so sacred are starting to get blurred, and they will continue to do so. And that’s a good thing, he said, because it is bringing developers back to the roots of agile. But if we don’t act now, agile will become too commercialized and idolized—turning it into something that it was never supposed to be.
Morgan imparted that the future of agile belongs to the software community. He said we all need to push harder and drive forward new ideas while still getting back to the main theme of agile: Be radical.
