Historical Roots of Agile Methods: Where Did “Agile Thinking” Come From?

Abstract

Abstract. The appearance of Agile methods has been the most noticeable change to software process thinking in the last fifteen years [16], but in fact many of the "Agile ideas" have been around since 70's or even before. Many studies and reviews have been conducted about Agile methods which ascribe their emergence as a reaction against traditional methods. In this paper, we argue that although Agile methods are new as a whole, they have strong roots in the history of software engineering. In addition to the iterative and incremental approaches that have been in use since 1957 [21], people who criticised the traditional methods suggested alternative approaches which were actually Agile ideas such as the response to change, customer involvement, and working software over documentation. The authors of this paper believe that education about the history of Agile thinking will help to develop better understanding as well as promoting the use of Agile methods. We therefore present and discuss the reasons behind the development and introduction of Agile methods, as a reaction to traditional methods, as a result of people's experience, and in particular focusing on reusing ideas from history.

Pragmatic web service design: An agile approach with the service responsibility and interaction design method

“…An agile method could be defined as an adaptive process run by talented and creative people and controlled with iterative and incremental development [18]. Although agile methods were initially described as development methodologies, the term agile represents an attitude, a philosophy, and a way of thinking that was presented through the principles and practices in the agile manifesto [19].…”

Evaluation of Agile Software Projects in the Public Sector: A Literature Review

“…From extensive and detailed planning before coding, practitioners started favoring short cycles of quick planning and minimal coding. As a result, the heavyweight methods for developing software used so far gave way to a multitude of lightweight methods that delivered working features rapidly [20].…”

Agile Design of Sewer System Control*

“…Faced with the need for development of a controller in parallel with the exploration of the system to be controlled and the need for acceptance by operators and managers, we saw a link with agile software development, where requirements are fluid and users/clients/owners are actively involved in the choice and ranking of features (Bessam et al, 2009;Abbas et al, 2008). Arguments for the importance of stakeholder involvement in general are given by Soncini-Sessa et al (2007a,b).…”