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Agile Exuberance


Agile has yet to make the cover of Time or Tiger Beat magazine. But in many other ways it’s a fad in full bloom.


By Larry Hickey, FRM


A SEARCH OF my LinkedIn network using the keyword ‘Agile’ returns over 600,000 results, only about 100,000 less than ‘Six Sigma’. Agile buzzword ‘scrum’ is good for 320,000 hits, well above the 160,000 or so I get for the Six Sigma jargon ‘black belt.’ Six Sigma, a savvy rebranding of continuous


quality improvement, was the last business fad to achieve wide impact. Based on the number of books published, the Six Sigma wave crested in 2010. Even today, there are more books being published about Six Sigma, but the trend is clear. Since 2010, new Agile titles are up 20% while Six Sigma is down 7%. The claim that Agile is a business fad raises


several questions. What is Agile? How do we know it’s a fad? And what pearls might be left on the beach when the wave recedes? With my apologies to nuance, here we go.


What is Agile? Agile is an iterative software development and


project management methodology that is focused on rapidly delivering testable product. Both requirements and the solution are expected to evolve. The approach is collaborative and adaptive. Agile is the better branded successor to ‘rapid prototyping’, ‘rapid application development’ and various other ‘lightweight’ development methods. Perhaps Agile is best defined by what it is not.


Agile is not Waterfall. Waterfall is a structured, sequential process that was re-purposed from the world of hardware development. Going back and making changes can be prohibitively expensive or even impossible with hardware. This may not be true with software. But this distinction was lost when Waterfall was appropriated for software development. As the name implies, Waterfall does not flow backward.


Business Fad? Let’s turn to that most democratic of institutions,


Wikipedia, to learn the characteristics of a business fad. The people’s encyclopedia lists 7 tell-tale signs. There is new jargon for existing business processes.


With Agile, a short meeting is rebranded a ‘stand up’ or a ‘scrum’. The mission is now the ‘manifesto’. Requirements have morphed into ‘user stories’. Requirements that aren’t currently being worked


on now form the ‘backlog’. It goes on. Let’s just say ‘check’ on this count. There are external consultants who specialize in the


implementation of the fad. Google ‘Agile Consulting’ and observe 14.3 million results. The first page should be sufficient to prove the point. There is no shortage of ‘experts’ with their hands out. Again, check.


No of Books Published By Keyword Year


2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002


Agile 318 285 264 252 198 112 151 174 126 90 58


Six Sigma 447 473 480 473 408 396 414 411 370 350 251


Source: Amazon / 23 Nov 2012 There is a certification or appraisal process performed


by an external agency for a fee. Where to begin. The CSM, CSP, CSC, icAgile, and PMI-ACP are among the alphabet soup of credentials currently on offer. There is some irony in the PMI’s new offering as they have awarded the PMP certification, with its reliance on Waterfall methodology, since 1984. They found religion in 2012. Big check.


Agile is an iterative software development and project management methodology


Job titles of existing employees are amended to


reference the fad. The application development manager has become the Scrum Coach. The project manager is now the Agile Project Manager. Best of all, software developers have been rebranded as


December 2012 65


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