The Agile Principles These Companies Live by — and Why

The Agile Manifesto, which lays out 12 principles for agile software development, was written in 2001, a time when many people were still using dial-up internet. While these principles still influence how engineering teams work today, many companies have tweaked them to fit modern technology. 

“The ambiguity of the 12 Agile principles allows teams to embody the parts that make sense and improve the product and team without being dogmatic or adhering to any single area or principle,” said Mark Sost, VP of engineering at LeafLink, a company that connects licensed cannabis brands with retailers. 

The Agile principles are open to interpretation rather than executed word-for-word. Four NYC tech leaders told us which Agile principles they implement in their business strategies and which they've tweaked to better suit their needs.

 

Vice President of Engineering Bhaskar Maddala considers all the Agile principles to be important. Here's which principles he implements to ensure Reonomy  “goes beyond just delivering software.”

 

The Agile Manifesto lists 12 Agile principles. Of these 12, which ones are most important to your team and why?

Customer satisfaction is the most important principle on Reonomy's team.  The Agile Manifesto states, “Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.” What differentiates Reonomy's approach to achieving customer satisfaction from other tech companies is that we make it a point to go beyond just delivering software.

We capture customer satisfaction by delivering valuable software. Our engineers deliver software by speaking with customers directly. Reonomy's engineers engage with customers by helping them utilize our software and API. This benefits both our customers and our engineers by allowing them to fully understand use cases, develop customer empathy and deliver quality software in a timely fashion.

We strongly believe technical excellence is driven by customer feedback.”

 

Which Agile principles does your team ignore, and why?

We don't outrightly ignore any of the principles. Instead we interpret them in the context of a fast-paced startup environment. 

The Agile Manifesto says, “continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.” We combine that principle with a need for early customer feedback. Working in a startup environment, customer feedback is at the crux of how we continue to deliver technical excellence. Our team of engineers is extraordinarily talented, but we're all humble enough to put working software in front of our customers and sacrifice technical excellence in order to seek customer feedback and guidance. 

This is a common pattern we practice in order to achieve new product discovery. We strongly believe technical excellence is driven by customer feedback. In turn, customer feedback allows the team to revisit implementation details while enabling agility, which cannot be divorced from customer outcomes.

 

Vice President of Product Josh Stephens says face-to-face communication is irreplaceable at Current.

 

The Agile Manifesto lists 12 agile principles. Of these 12, which ones are most important to your team and why?

A major benefit of having our whole team here in NYC has been the opportunity to discuss challenges and find solutions in person. The sixth principle encourages face-to-face communication for more effective development. The opportunity to turn around our chairs and quickly solve a problem in person has been critical to our ability to release features with speed and precision.

With face-to-face communication, we can discuss challenges and find solutions in person.”

 

Which Agile principles does your team ignore, and why?

It’s not that we ignore any elements of Agile development completely, but as a small team it’s our responsibility to continuously adapt our development principles and habits to fit our specific needs.

The second Agile principle, which calls for welcoming changing requirements, is something we take with a grain a salt. Although we constantly change features while in design, we do our best to restrict changing scope for anything that has already started development. This increases our speed of development and prevents features from slipping.

 

Vice President of Engineering Mark Sost agrees with the Agile principles when it comes to prioritizing the customer. He said Lealink's sprints and quarterly planning are tailored around customer feedback. 

 

The Agile Manifesto lists 12 agile principles. Of these 12, which ones are most important to your team and why?

“Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.” This may be one of the only principles that we believe in without any caveats. Product iteration and customer satisfaction are at the core of everything we do as an organization. We’re constantly soliciting feedback, holding working sessions and generally trying our best to understand and fulfill the needs of our users. We specifically tailor our sprints and quarterly planning around what we’re hearing from them. We’ve also structured our teams to be nimble enough to react to changes in the market, meaning that we can change course if we see we’re heading down a path that no longer leads to maximum customer value. 

Another principle is “Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.” In all software development, there are inevitably times where you need to push harder than normal to deliver something that’s impactful and matters to your customers and to the business. What’s more important, however, is recognizing that those times need to be balanced with a return to a pace that can be sustained long-term. That’s one of the reasons we’ve made this concept a part of our company’s core values. We want to make sure our teammates know that what we’re doing is challenging and that we push ourselves to achieve it, but only to a certain, non-breaking point. 

We’ve structured our teams to be nimble enough to react to changes in the market.”

 

Which Agile principles does your team ignore, and why?

We don’t particularly agree with “Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.”

In an ideal world or a smaller team environment, this principle makes sense — you want those closest to the customer providing insight and feedback to ensure you’re delivering the best product. However, as teams and companies grow, daily interaction becomes challenging and even prohibitive to progress. We find that incorporating business stakeholder involvement into the research and design phase of a project helps start the team off in the right direction. Maintaining consistent, albeit not daily, touchpoints throughout the project leads to better results without slowing innovation and delivery to customers.

 

Veer Patel, project manager at Dashlane, considers the Agile principles as an overall mindset instead of something more permanent, like rules.  

 

The Agile Manifesto lists 12 agile principles. Of these 12, which ones are most important to your team and why?

Every Agile principle is a great one, but if I had to prioritize, I'd select “welcoming change and working together.” Change is how we grow, but sometimes people are cautious of change, so you can counterbalance it by taking subtle steps. Sometimes change is external, and you need to be reactive and focus on the people who are being affected.

Ultimately, my role is to align the right people in the room and make sure everyone is motivated to solve the problem at hand. It’s important to collaborate with the people that contribute to a good environment — colleagues that have technical knowledge, a user’s perspective and positive intent. When you have these three elements together, everything falls into place.

My role is to align the right people in the room and make sure everyone is motivated to solve the problem.”

 

Which Agile principles does your team ignore, and why?

All of the Agile principles are key components to being successful — it's a mindset of how you think and operate. I wouldn't say we choose to ignore some, but we're cautious that they can be taken to an extreme. 

The principle that comes to mind is the measure of progress. If you're not careful, this can go to a place where it's negatively impacting the team. Having too many deadlines can pressure teams to only focus on roadblocks. What we need to do is focus on the overarching solution. If you don't focus on the best solution, your software may work, but you've only created a bandage.