What Lessons Can the Agile Community Learn from A Maverick Fighter Pilot?

Abstract

For the agile software development community, agility is defined by the values expressed in the agile manifesto. But in concrete terms, what does it mean for a software project to be agile? US Air Force Colonel John Boyd defined agility as the ability to operate the Observation-Orientation-Decision-Action (OODA) loop faster than an adversary. Agility therefore depends on the tempo at which we can exploit the OODA loop, and it is culture, not methodologies or tools that determine our OODA loop speed. This definition of agility has implications for the software development community. This short paper introduces Colonel Boyd, the OODA loop, the factors which influence OODA loop speed and the possible research opportunities into software engineering culture we are considering.

Agility in context

“…Adolph has defined Agility as "the ability of an organization to react to change in its environment faster than the rate of these changes" [2].…”

Position paper on the challenges posed by modern applications to cyber-physical systems theory

“…The second framework shown in Fig. 1(b) depicts a modified drawing of the Observe-Orient-Decide-Act (OODA) Loop 2 developed by Colonel John Richard Boyd originally in the context of agility military strategy, but since applied to several technical domains such as agile software development [Ado06]. Building on these two frameworks, next we develop our classification of intelligent CPS as follows.…”

Human-Centered Software Engineering as a Chance to Ensure Software Quality Within the Digitization of Human Workflows

“…Scrum, XP, Kanban) help us to get more agile but focus on the development itself. Taking the findings of Adolph [20], agile itself is a relative concept, a time based strategy for operational success. It is about reacting to changing environments, respectively the model we have of an environment.…”