The Pragmatic Manifesto

I really like the Agile Manifesto. Although old, it has some basic tenets that organisations still fail to follow. Interesting to see the Reactive Manifesto too.

I’d like to propose The Pragmatic Manifesto. Normally software development is about making the right decisions to, among other aspects, increase revenue, increase user satisfaction or maintain velocity (through sensible and timely code refactoring etc.). I’m sure I’ll add to this but let’s start with the following:

Iterative and incremental dark launch over expensive pre-emptive performance testing

Features that are immediately required over features that may be required

Just enough design up front over diving straight into implementation

Fact based product enhancement over theory

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2 Responses to The Pragmatic Manifesto

  1. Good idea. In some ways it reflects XP principles so far – features that may be required? You Ain’t Gonna Need It!

    I really think the “Release early, Release often” statement applies as well – it relates to the fact based product enhancement, and it allows you to collect a significant number of facts you can use to draw your future plan.

  2. Mik Quinlan says:

    Quite right. In the project I’m on we’ve been practicing only BA’ing a story when it’s in production. We also have 1 week iterations which keeps our stories small. So the effect is we have small releases. When something not immediately explainable happens after a release (which has only happened 3 or 4 times in the last couple of years) we can narrow it down to specific code changes immediately. I’m not sure if you’ve heard of it, but there is also a concept called “Value Learning” which the industry has coined to describe monitoring users and making decisions based on their usage patterns for new features and enhancements.

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