The Agile Manifesto has the following 4 core values:
-
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
this means to communicate, a lot. -
Working software over comprehensive documentation
if you are working on something that is not working properly why bother documenting what’s doing (and maybe it’s even going to change). Also, the customer will use / buy the software, not the documentation. -
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
the requirements cannot be collected at the beginning and will change during the development cycle, so continuous feedback is needed. -
Responding to change over following a plan
it doesn’t mean have no plan at all, it’s just about to be flexible.
The Anti Agile Manifesto is telling exactly what the things really are:
- Epics are really just projects
- Stories are really just use cases
- Sprints are really just work
- Stand-ups are really just meetings
- Iterations are really just versions
- Backlogs are really just to-do lists
- Backlog grooming is really just planning
- Burn-down charts are really just earned value charts
- Velocity is really just output
- And those tasks, in fact, are really just tasks.
The Minifesto has got the following points:
- Fight for Pareto’s law, look for the 20% of effort that will give you the 80% of results.
- Prioritize, minimalism isn’t about not doing things but about focusing first in the important.
- Perfect is the enemy of good, first do it, then do it right, then do it better.
- Kill the baby, don’t be afraid of starting all over again. Fail soon, learn fast.
- Add value. Think constantly how you can help your team and position yourself in that field/skill.
- Basics, first. Follow always top-down thinking starting by the best-practises of CS.
- Think different. Simple is harder than complex, which means you’ll need to use your creativity.
- Synthesis is the key to communication. We have to write code for humans not machines.
- Keep it plain. Try to keep your designs with a few layers of indirection.
- Clean kipple and redundancy. Minimalism is all about removing distractions.
So, stop following blindly a trend just because it’s cool or because everyone is using it or talking about it and start actually to find what really works for you.
Don’t waste too much time and money on something that is not paying back.