By Christine Crandell
Incremental software development methodologies can be traced all the way back to the 1950s, but it wasn’t until 2001 that “The Agile Manifesto” created a comprehensive and landmark account of agile development and why it’s a better, lighter approach to creating software faster.
Ever since then, developers have been using agile methodologies to improve the speed and flexibility of software development through operational improvements, but most other groups within the same company have not adopted a similar philosophy.
Conceptually we’ve bottled up agile as being for software developers, as if speed, flexibility, and complexity weren’t also issues held within every other departments of fast-paced software companies. When software developers are using agile methodologies, but nobody else is, developers become like the clique group of school kids who share a foreign language nobody else understands.
This has caused us to limit the potential for agile frameworks, because they're only implemented operationally, but not strategically. It’s like a wooden boat full of rowers. They might have seamless coordination and full visibility into the work of their colleagues, but they can’t see the captain’s orders up on deck.
