Is the Agile Manifesto outdated?

Looking through the program for GOTO Aarhus, I saw that one of the tracks is about people and processes. This is a track they have had at GOTO Aarhus for some years, and one that I usually go to most talks at. After looking at the program, I don't think this year will be any different.

The reason I go to this track, is that I feel that the greatest challenges in software development is not related to technology, but rather to the interaction between people - exactly what this track is all about.

Looking back at all the conferences I've been to the last few years, it has been talks about organizations and processes that has challenged my world-views the most, forcing me to re-evaluate my assumptions, and decide whether or not they were right or not.

A simple example - last year I listened to talks by both Jez Humble and Dan North, where they mentioned the fact that one has to understand the trade-offs in order to make informed decisions. Otherwise you don't know whether it is the right choice for your situation or not. This is a simple message, and one which is easy to grasp on the surface, but also one it is easy to ignore, when there is a choice that seems obvious.

Lets take source control, which most of us would always insist on.

Source control is without a doubt a must in just about all projects where there is more than one person working on code (and the majority of projects where there is just one person working on the code). Does that mean that we should always use a source control system? Well, no - we need to look at the individual situation, and decided whether it is appropriate or not, evaluating the trade-offs.

In most cases the trade-off is between risk-reduction versus speed and/or cost. Here most would err on the side of risk-reduction, but it could be that speed is of such paramount importance, that the time to set up the source control would make the project worthless, and in that case, then risk-reduction would be the wrong choice.

Personally, I have never been in this situation, and find it highly unlikely I ever will, but it is important to keep it in mind, even when the choice seems obvious.

This is just one of the ways talks related to people and processes has changed my way of thinking.

Another obvious way such tracks have changed my way of thinking, is to make me more cautious about Agile and especially the Agile Manifesto.

At GOTO Amsterdam 2013, Kai Gib gave a interesting talk How to Focus Agile so it delivers Value to your Stakeholders, where he correctly pointed out that the Agile Manifesto has very little focus on actually providing value to the business side (though it does pay attention to value in the principles). Since providing value is the actual reason for doing a project, it would seem problematic that this is left out of the actual manifesto.

Kai Gibs talk, and similar talks I've heard the last few years, have left me wondering if perhaps it is time to retire the Agile Manifesto, or at least put less emphasis on it. Given the fact that I see it presented less and less often as part of slides at a talk, I don't think I am alone in feeling this way.

Actually, looking at the GOTO Aarhus program, it seems like that even the original signees of the Agile Manifesto might feel this way, since there are two sessions on the first day of the people and processes track called A retake on the Agile Manifesto (part 1 and part 2), where five people will be takein "a closer look at what has happened in the last 13 years since the Agile Manifesto was published and evaluate where the development community is going in the future".

Three of those five people are co-signers of the original manifesto (Martin Folwer, Andrew Hunt and Dave Thomas).

I am very much looking forward to these sessions, and to to what they will bring. Maybe something new and exciting will come out of it.

One thing is sure, I expect that I, and everyone else listening, will learn a lot.