{"id":5905,"date":"2016-12-01T15:39:28","date_gmt":"2016-12-01T17:39:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.plataformatec.com.br\/?p=5905"},"modified":"2016-12-01T19:00:45","modified_gmt":"2016-12-01T21:00:45","slug":"we-are-not-necessarily-agile-but-we-are-certainly-agile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.plataformatec.com.br\/2016\/12\/we-are-not-necessarily-agile-but-we-are-certainly-agile\/","title":{"rendered":"We are not necessarily Agile… but we are certainly agile!"},"content":{"rendered":"

You might have heard this expression before and, if you did, the title of this blog post may be enough for you to understand how Plataformatec works. However, if you have never heard about that or are still interested on how we work and what we value in our projects, stick around and “fasten your seat belts. It\u2019s going to be a bumpy ride”<\/em> – All About Eve, 1950.<\/p>\n

Agile, agile. Tom\u0101to, tom\u0103to?<\/h2>\n

You may be asking yourself: “why in hell is he differentiating two identical words, whilst the only difference is a capital A?”<\/em>. Well, you are right (but, really, who uses “whilst”?), they should have the same meaning. But after 2001, the year of the Agile Manifesto, everything changed. But first, a little bit of history.<\/p>\n

The malevolent Waterfall<\/h3>\n

The way our industry used to run software projects in the old-days is somehow outdated. It worked for projects in which the probability of changing its tracks was low and, therefore, it was easy to plan everything in advance. Well, turns out Momma Forrest’s quote, “life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you\u2019re gonna get”<\/em> – Forrest Gump, 1994, was not only right for life but also for software development projects.<\/p>\n

It turns out that the amount of changes throughout a project’s life was enormous, and most of the things that were defined beforehand usually lost their value and were not necessary anymore.<\/p>\n

The agile revolution<\/h3>\n

In order to deliver software faster and more accurately (with more agility), a revolution started to take place in the software development area. In the mid-90s and early 2000s, a lot of methodologies started to be invented and the Waterfall methodology was then deprecated.<\/p>\n

To generalize the intention of all those methodologies, some great folks got together in Snowbird, close to Salt Lake City, UT, and signed a manifesto with some principles that they believed were the pillars of an agile software development. The manifesto became known as the Agile Manifesto, and here is where we start using the capital A word.<\/p>\n

Agile Methodologies<\/h3>\n

After the Agile Manifesto, lots of people started to amalgamate different “modern” methodologies in a box called Agile Methodology. After that, eXtreme Programming, Scrum, Kanban, Lean, AUP, FDD and others were part of one big magical box.<\/p>\n

Since then, everyone who talks about Agile, is talking about the set of tools and methodologies that were born with the intention of being agile.<\/p>\n

The misunderstanding<\/h2>\n

When we say, we are Agile (or even agile, since we are saying and not writing), people almost always ask: “Oh! So, do you use Kanban or Scrum?”. Agile became a synonym of those practices, but what if we are agile without following any of those? At least not by-the-book?<\/p>\n

\n They may take our lives, but they\u2019ll never take our freedom!<\/cite>
\n \u2014 Braveheart, 1995\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well… yes, I’m overdramatic. But still, we don’t follow any of those methodologies strictly, even though we studied most of them thoroughly.<\/p>\n

Plataformatec way<\/h2>\n

We like, and follow, most of the Agile Manifesto’s ideas. We respond fast to change, motivate a healthy and constant relationship with the customer, apply continuous delivery and more. But the idea behind following those is not to be called Agile but to foster the agility culture. We want to deliver work fast and accurately.<\/p>\n

Therefore, we defined three values that we follow throughout a project:<\/p>\n