Unfold The Agile Manifesto – Part 2
Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools.
This statement is part of the agile manifesto. It highlights the importance of people and communication within the project. The key to understanding this statement is understanding the meaning of the word over. It may seem simple yet many people get it wrong. The word over is repeated four times in the Agile manifesto.
The word over in this context means that while processes and tools are important in software development, individuals and interactions are more valued. This doesn’t mean we do away with the tools and processes. Actually we cannot work without them, but we should put more emphasis on the people and effective communication rather than following rigid processes. Developers love their tools and processes as they help them get things done. However, they can get in the way of people and their interactions. This is when we now value the left side of the manifesto. Processes and tools stifle creativity. They encourage individuals to conform rather than bring on board new ideas, or new requirements. However, when we value individuals and interaction more, we encourage innovation and problem solving.
The point here is that the processes and tools don’t matter as much as the people who are using them. You could have the best tools and well laid out processes but if the team doesn’t adapt them to their needs, they won’t be of much benefit. Tools and processes should be used to aid the team achieve their goals.In all high performing teams, individuals and interactions are the essential driving force. When we lay more emphasis on interactions, communication becomes more efficient. In a study done by MIT’s Human Dynamic Laboratory, on role of communication and interaction within teams, the researchers found out that 35% of team performance could be explained by the number of face to face exchanges between team members. It also found out that social interaction is critical to team performance with socializing accounting to an improvement of at least 50% in communication. In agile development, we put more emphasis on individuals and interactions through iterations, daily standup meetings, inspect and adapt cycles, pair programming.
Tools used should aid the team without adding any burden to them. Development and testing tools come to mind. No tool or process should substitute leadership and management. Some tools such as Jira are so versatile that they may lead to team member forgetting the importance of individuals and interactions. This tool can do almost everything including recording what we have done and passing it to other team members, send emails, and display story cards on virtual boards. But even with such kind of tools, we should always remember that great software starts and ends with people. Agile teams should always be having conversations and interactions with all stakeholders. This helps get an understanding of all matters at hand, solving any arising problems and disagreements and even socializing. Agile environments are about forming great relationships.
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