The Agile Manifesto Needs Updates and a 14th Principle

Bryan Finster, -whom I don’t know from bars of soap but the DevOps community- wrote a piece upgrading the Agile manifesto and he lived to tell the tale but only barely. Bryan asks if it’s heretical or a good idea in his comment accompanying the update - I don’t see why it can’t be both.

Do I personally agree with every word choice? Maybe not but we certainly owe him a debt of gratitude for busting the conversation open. For instance, he entitled it “Upgrading the Agile Manifesto” whereas I would say it’s an “Update” and yes, a long-overdue one, because whether we like it or not it has been tens of years since it has been written. TENS. OF. YEARS.

And it has become the talk of the Agile village. Both publicly where people attacked Bryan's credentials and in private where they questioned the need. I really enjoyed the latter kind of discussions and wish they would have been public because they were of the constructive sort and I think Bryan himself would have welcomed them.

One objection that I heard a couple of times that would not have occurred to me but seems valid is how Principle 6 mentions “face-to-face conversation” and that is surely clearly outdated in our virtual, distributed, remote work new reality.

The modifications Bryan makes are chiefly around the fact that people should have always been religious about the spirit of not the wording of the manifesto. That being verbatim was only needed as protection against Fragile not valuable in itself.