A group of 17 software development practitioners met in February 2001, at The Lodge at the Snowbird ski resort in Utah, and before concluding their meeting, they agreed on a core set of values and principles. That set of values and principles has come to be known as the Manifesto for Agile Software Development. Among the things that group of practitioners had in common was a desire to find an alternative to what had been predominant approach to software development.
The general term for the documentation-intensive, heavy-weight process that the Agile Manifesto sought to improve upon is the waterfall model, or “waterfall,” for short. The approach that is described in the Agile Manifesto differs from the waterfall model in numerous ways, including: 1.) An iterative approach, where teams seek to release value to customers early and often, as an alternative to the rigid, phased-based approach of waterfall; 2.) Short and frequent feedback loops, where one or more people who can represent the “voice of the customer” are engaged with the teams producing the software, instead of the tendency for customers to only be regularly engaged at certain phases of the waterfall model; 3.) Focus on the delivery of value, which in practice means emphasis on the most important output from the process–working software–as opposed to the waterfall model, that gives at least equal weight to documentation and other process-driven artifacts.
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Acknowledgments
Authored by Philip Rogers
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