This thread of discussion at Alan Francis ' blog has prompted me to re-evaluate my affiliation with the "agile community" (to use my own phrase).

First, let's define "agile community" as the Agile Alliance and its members, those who have signed the Agile Manifesto or those who have written a paper, spoken at a conference or written a book on the topic of agile software development.

I often refer to the "agile community" as if I were an observer of it rather than a part of it. Why should this be so? Firstly and foremostly it is about objectivity. It is important to be able to hold a neutral mindset and try to evaluate "agile" as others see it - those others are many of my colleagues in management positions in Fortune 1000 companies. So a standoffish objectivity is important for me because it is important to my audience.

However, there are other reasons why I don't feel part of the "agile community". One is that I don't work as a consultant and I don't make a profession out of attending conferences and hanging out in hotel lobbies and bars with the other "agilists". Fair enough! But there is something more subtle - I worry that the agile community gets sucked into perpetual naval gazing. A state where it is more important to worry about whether something is "agile" or not, or whether something is "more agile" than something else. To me these are not important questions. The important question is whether software development is aligned with the stockholders interests and whether software development can be performed in such a manner as to improve the return to the stockholders. It's all about better software, faster! Good, fast, cheap - pick 3!

Hence, I have no time for discussion about "but is this self-organizing" or not. I'm not interested in the observed attributes of some "agile" methods - only in the results.

As such I will continue to pursue the study of management science and software engineering, as I see it happening in the Fortune 1000 on medium and large scale projects, for continual improvement of shareholder aligned performance. What is the goal of the organization? How best can the day-to-day activities of software engineers be organized to align with that?

I am not interested in being a member of a club for the sake of membership, nor am I interested in political association for the benefits of that association (though I recognize that political association is a key part to being a successful manager). I am not interested in aligning with a movement because I have something to sell. I don't work as a consultant. I don't sell anything. I may make some pocket money from selling a few books but it's small reward for the hours spent developing the material (including the on-going effort of this site).

As long as the "agile community" continues to focus on the right questions, "How can we govern software engineering better? How can we align our day-to-day activities with the stockholders interests? How can we improve the return to the stockholders through software development? How can we report our progress transparently and in a customer valued manner? and How can we continue to build better software, faster and cheaper?" then I will want to part of that community. It is these principles that were at the heart of Feature Driven Development and why I am proud to be part of it. If the "agile community" degenerates into discussion of "my method is more self-organizing than yours" or "my method has faster feedback than yours" or "my method is more fun than yours" then I'm not interested. As Jeff De Luca has said (paraphrasing) at the start of many projects, "You're not here to have fun. You're not here to make your resume look good. You're not here to use cool technology. All those things may be important but they are secondary. You are here first and foremost to make a profit for the stockholders. Now let's get started."