Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Agile Tribes

The people that got together 10 years ago in Salt Lake City had different backgrounds, specialties, positions, etc.There were some folks already working on their own methodologies, such as Beck with XP, Schwaber and Sutherland with Scrum and Cockburn with Crystal. Some of them were more technical, specializing in OO, programming and testing while some others were managers or people more interested in the methodology aspects of software development. This is more or less what I believe were the backgrounds that depict the folks that were there:



Now I wonder how these 'tribes' (or communities or subfields of interests - I wonder what is the best name) develop over the years. How did they grow or mutated? Which are the new tribes that make up the Agile world?. Who are the new referents of these tribes? Will you help me create this map?
How do I define what a tribe is? Let's list some items that define a tribe:
  • They share the same values and principles (which should enter the big Agile umbrella)
  • They work with a certain methodology or method
  • They have some referents
  • They get together in one of more congresses (this could be a consequence of the previous)
Am I missing something to define a tribe? Hummm, yeah for sure. Will see it as we go (iteratively). For the moment, I will research for each tribe the following items:
  • Reason to be (values/principles they share, objectives)
  • History
  • Referents
  • Present/Future?
Now I just need to select the most important tribes in today's Agile map. I will start with these ones:
  • Kanbaners
  • Software Craftsmen
  • Lean-startupers
  • Scrumers
  • XPs

I will focus on the first 3 groups, as the last 2 exist since the beggining of Agile.
I'd love to receive suggestions/corrections, etc.

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