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Darrell K. RigbyJeff SutherlandHirotaka Takeuchi
April 20, 2016
You hear a lot about agile innovation these days. Teams using agile methods
get things done faster than teams using traditional processes. They keep
customers happier. They enjoy their work more. Agile has indisputably
transformed software development, and many experts believe it is now poised to
expand far beyond IT.
Ironically, that s where it began outside of IT.
Some trace agile methodologies all the way back to Francis Bacon s articulation
of the scientific method in 1620. A more reasonable starting point might be the
1930s, when the physicist and statistician Walter Shewhart of Bell Labs began
applying Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycles to the improvement of products and
processes. Shewhart taught this iterative and incremental-development
methodology to his mentee, W. Edwards Deming, who used it extensively in Japan
in the years following World War II. Toyota hired Deming to train hundreds of
the company s managers, eventually capitalizing on his expertise to develop the
famous Toyota Production System the primary source of today s lean
thinking. Iterative and incremental development methods were also a major
contributor to the successful creation of the X-15 hypersonic jet in the 1950s.
In 1986, one of us (Takeuchi) and coauthor Ikujiro Nonaka published an article
in Harvard Business Review called The New New Product Development Game.
Studying manufacturers that were releasing successful innovations far faster
than competitors, the authors identified a team-oriented approach that changed
the design and development process for products such as copiers at Fuji-Xerox,
automobile engines at Honda, and cameras at Canon. Rather than following
conventional relay race methods of product development in which one group
of functional specialists hands off its completed phase to the next functional
stage these companies were using what Takeuchi and Nonaka called a rugby
approach, where a team tries to go the whole distance as a unit, passing the
ball back and forth.
In 1993, another of us (Sutherland) faced what seemed like an impossible task:
Easel Corporation, a software company, needed to develop a new product to
replace its legacy offerings in less than six months. Sutherland already had a
strong background in methodologies such as rapid application development,
object-oriented design, PDSA cycles, and skunkworks. He hoped to create a
skunkworks-like culture in the middle of corporate headquarters, blending the
benefits of both organizational separation and integration. So he began by
learning everything he could about maximizing organizational productivity.
Reading hundreds of papers and interviewing leading product-management experts,
he found himself intrigued by several provocative ideas.
One came from a Bell Labs article on the Borland Quattro Pro team, suggesting
that short daily team meetings increased group productivity dramatically. But
the capstone concept for Sutherland was the discovery of Takeuchi s and Nonaka
s rugby approach, even though it focused on manufacturing rather than software.
Borrowing many of the HBR article s key ideas and filling in specific
operational practices, Sutherland created a new way of developing software;
honoring the rugby imagery, he dubbed his approach scrum. Scrum methods
enabled him to finish his seemingly impossible project on time, under budget,
and with fewer bugs than any previous release. He then collaborated with
longtime colleague Ken Schwaber to codify the approach, and in 1995 the pair
presented scrum to the public for the first time.
Of course, Sutherland and Schwaber weren t alone in their search for innovative
methods. The Information Age was exploding. Disruptive technologies were
terrorizing slow-footed competitors. Start-ups and incumbents alike sought
better ways to adapt to the unfamiliar and turbulent environment. Software was
becoming an integral part of nearly every business function, and many creative
software developers were working hard on better methods of programming to
increase adaptability.
In 2001, 17 developers who called themselves organizational anarchists met in
Snowbird, Utah, to share their ideas. Sutherland and other proponents of scrum
were among them. But the group included advocates of several competitive
approaches, including extreme programming (XP); crystal; adaptive software
development (ASD); feature-driven development (FDD); and the
dynamic-systems-development method (DSDM). All these approaches were often
known as lightweight frameworks because they used fewer, simpler rules to
allow faster adaptation to rapidly changing environments. Not many of the
attendees found the lightweight terminology flattering.
Although they disagreed on much, the group eventually settled on a new name for
the movement: agile. The word was suggested by one attendee who had been
reading the book Agile Competitors and Virtual Organizations: Strategies for
Enriching the Customer. The book gave 100 examples of companies including
ABB, Federal Express, Boeing, Bose, and Harley-Davidson that were creating
new ways of adapting to more turbulent markets. Name in hand, attendees then
forged consensus on a call to arms dubbed the Manifesto for Agile Software
Development, which spelled out four key values that everyone agreed on. Later
in the meeting, and continuing over the next few months, they developed 12
operating principles, called Principles Behind the Agile Manifesto. From 2001
on, all development frameworks that aligned with these values and principles
would be known as agile techniques.
Once the Snowbird meeting had canonized a creed for agile innovation, the agile
movement spread rapidly. The signatories posted their document online and
invited others to add their names as supporters. Most members of the original
group, joined by a number of new adherents, reconvened later in the year to
discuss ways to disseminate agile principles. All agreed to write and speak on
the topic. Several attendees wanted to form a more permanent working group; so
they established a nonprofit organization called the Agile Alliance to support
the movement. Today, the Agile Alliance has nearly 30,000 members and
subscribers.
Meanwhile, agile methodologies continued to evolve. In the late 1980s and early
1990s, researchers from MIT had begun to study Japanese manufacturing systems,
especially the Toyota production system. They coined the term lean to
describe the system s methods of improving productivity by eliminating waste (
muda ) through reductions in uneven work flows ( mura ) and destructive
overburdening ( muri ). Although lean methodologies were not presented as agile
frameworks in Snowbird, formal lean and kanban software-development systems
emerged during the 2000s. At first, some agile purists refused to recognize
these approaches as agile methodologies. But lean advocates intensified their
focus on customer collaboration, and eventually more agile practitioners came
to accept lean, kanban, and their hybrids (such as scrumban and lean scrum) as
legitimate applications of agile values and principles.
Success has many fathers, and agile innovation has a colorful heritage. While
agile s complex family tree sometimes provokes passionate debates among agile
practitioners, two things are clear: first, agile s roots extend far beyond
information technology and, second, agile s branches will continue to spread to
improve innovation processes in nearly every function of every industry.
Darrell K. Rigby is a partner in the Boston office of Bain & Company. He heads
the firm s global innovation and retail practices. He is the author of Winning
in Turbulence.
Jeff Sutherland is a cocreator of the scrum form of agile innovation and the
CEO of Scrum Inc., a consulting and training firm.
Hirotaka Takeuchi is a professor in the strategy unit of Harvard Business
School.