Are You Living the Agile Values?

The Agile manifesto – Agile values may be a relatively new concept, but businesses have been employing them in one shape or another for some time.

For many many years, people have been doing business and interacting amongst themselves. Many products and services have been created and sold to increase their welfare.

Along those same lines, process improvements and product redesigns are part of this evolution. People have been improving their processes and activities with new technologies, new methods and new frameworks to increase quality, productivity and customer satisfaction.

One new approach—business agility—has been widely used since the industrial revolution. Industries from many different parts and segments have been streamlining their processes and focusing on their products, but the word “agility,” or more specifically “Agile,” hasn’t been as popular as it is now thanks to the publication of The Manifesto for Agile Software Development.

17 developers gathered in 2001 to discuss better ways o develop software. After that meeting, they were able to publish a manifesto with the premise of “uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it.”

In the manifesto, they came up with four values and twelve principles for software development. It was first applied in the software industry but, like many other approaches, it was quickly absorbed into many other sectors including education, agriculture, marketing, aerospace and others.

The Agile Manifesto is such a powerful tool for so many because it’s simple and clear. It provides clarity on its message so people can live its values and principles and feel how is to be in an Agile environment.

Do you know if your organization is Agile?

The four values in the manifesto challenge the current state and recommend where should you should focus to increase agility:

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.
• Working software over comprehensive documentation.
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation.
• Responding to change over following a plan.

Agility can be translated into, but not limited to, how people respond to change to produce something that sometimes is not clear.

Although some organizations have been living these values for some time, others are just now experimenting with this valuable new way of working.

We’d like to know how you live those four values using a short survey we’ve developed.

—

Take the Survey

You’re going to be able to identify the four key values and select how do you agree with each one of them.

It will take you two minutes or so to complete the survey. We’ll share the results here on BERTEIG.com and directly with those who opt-in it.

Please take a moment to respond and share with your colleagues.

If you find this useful, please consider contributing with our
“Value for Value” model.