Agility ≠ Speed

Kevlin Henney

⏱ 90 minute session
intermediate
11:00-12:30, Wednesday, 2nd April 2025
Velocity. Sprints. More points, more speed.

An obsession with speed often overtakes the core values of agile software development, leading to a backlash and its devaluation. Agile software development is not simply about the development of software; it's development of working software. Sprints are not about sprinting; they're about sustainable pace. Time to market is less important than time in market. Full-stack development is normally a statement about technology, but it also applies to individuals and interactions. The full stack touches both the code and the world outside the code, and with that view comes responsibility and pause for thought. Doing the wrong thing smarter is not smart. The point of a team is its group intelligence not its numbers. Is scaling up the challenge, or is scaling down the real challenge?

The distraction and misuse of speed, velocity, point-based systems, time, team size, scale, etc. is not the accelerant of agile development. Agility lies in experimentation, responsiveness and team intelligence.

🏷 agile development
🏷 Conway's law
🏷 scaling
🏷 prioritisation
🏷 roadmaps
🏷 collective intelligence
🏷 velocity

Kevlin Henney

Kevlin is an independent consultant, trainer, speaker and writer. His development interests lie at the intersection of programming, practice and people. He has been a columnist for various magazines and web sites, a contributor to open- and closed-source software and a member of more committees than is probably healthy (it has been said that "a committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled"). He is co-author of two volumes in the Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture series, editor of 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know and co-editor of 97 Things Every Java Programmer Should Know.