{"id":32,"date":"2017-06-25T12:37:40","date_gmt":"2017-06-25T12:37:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/innoroo.com\/blog\/?p=32"},"modified":"2017-06-25T12:37:40","modified_gmt":"2017-06-25T12:37:40","slug":"interview-with-alistair-cockburn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/innoroo.com\/blog\/2017\/06\/25\/interview-with-alistair-cockburn\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Alistair Cockburn"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alistair Cockburn needs no introduction to the Agile world. I have been lucky enough to get into a conversation with him.<\/span><\/p>\n

For the uninitiated, he is one of the original signatories of Agile Manifesto, internationally renowned IT strategist, expert on agile development, use cases, process design, project management, and object-oriented design, and a Poet. Here is our <\/span>conversation<\/span><\/a> on what is Agile and what is not Agile.<\/span><\/p>\n

Q1. People recognize Alistair Cockburn as one of the original signatories of Agile Manifesto. What alternative introduction you wish to give yourself?<\/b><\/p>\n

Alistair: If there are only a few words, and to a technical audience, that is fine. If you have more time, more words, then I guess I would like you to say that I have spent my whole life traveling, living in different cultures. This brings to my work a particular perspective about not intervening in cultures. Maybe also that my favorite activities are dancing, learning, and traveling.<\/span><\/p>\n

Q2. From 2001 to 2016, how do you see the Agile methodology evolving?<\/b><\/p>\n

Alistair: There were a number of agile methodologies in the 90s: Crystal, Scrum, FDD, DSDM\u2026 XP was the dominant one in 2001 when we wrote the manifesto. At that time, people were very focused on finding the <\/span>right <\/b>methodology (XP was very good, for example). Two of us in the room (Jim Highsmith and me) wanted a multitude of methodologies available \u2013 we want <\/span>all<\/span><\/i> methodologies used to be this thing we called agile.<\/span><\/p>\n

Adaptive was the other word we almost chose. Methodologies should be adaptive, that is, the team should change their working rules every 3-6 months, to keep up with changing team members, state of the project, changing competitors.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2001, that was still pretty strange, even in that room. They thought XP was already adaptive. By today\u2019s standards, XP is very strict.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAdaptive\u201d methodologies are no longer strange, they are the most common thing, even though some people keep looking for a single scalable model (which they won\u2019t find).<\/span><\/p>\n

I love that these days, simply \u201cdelivering software\u201d isn\u2019t enough. We do that, we know how to do that, many teams do that. So now, we get to focus on the meaning and the impact of what we are delivering.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is the new frontier, and it is exciting.<\/span><\/p>\n

Q3. What is Agile and what is not Agile?<\/b><\/p>\n

Alistair: \u2018Agile\u2019 is an ordinary word in English, it means \u201cable to move quickly and easily\u201d (online dictionary), with an emphasis on changing direction. It was for that reason we chose the word to match the sense of the way we wanted to work, when discussing our approach to software development back in 2001. Once we had the word in place, we had to decide what it meant <\/span>to us<\/b> for the purpose of writing software (and more generally, of designing products). We selected 4 values, or ways of centering ourselves in the world while working. We chose:<\/span><\/p>\n