Estimated read time: 6-7 minutes
SNOWBIRD — In February 2001, 17 software developers and engineers, casually dressed in Levis and tucked-in shirts, stood around a whiteboard in the Aspen Room at Snowbird Lodge. They had come to the ski resort to pen a manifesto, telling the world what was wrong with software and how to fix it. Their manifesto for Agile Software Development — known now as the "Agile Manifesto" — would soon change the world.
But before they could put these revolutionary words down on the whiteboard, the 17 men had to listen to one another.
Early beginnings
In 1993, a young software consultant named Alistair Cockburn moved to the Salt Lake Valley and started looking for connections. "As a solo consultant, it gets pretty lonely," Cockburn said of his early days in Utah.
He soon formed an alliance with Jim Highsmith, and the two met often around town to trade notes and talk shop. By 1999, Cockburn had organized a more formal Object Oriented Design Roundtable to continue the conversation.
In meetings like this, among other software developers around the country, ideas were sparked and alliances formed, Martin Fowler, who was in the circle of 17 at Snowbird in February 2001, explained in a blog post. A contingent of developers arose who believed software should be created differently; they called themselves "lightweight methodologists," with Cockburn and Highsmith among them.
The problem with software in the '90s was it was anything but lightweight.
Utah Agile CEO Steve Ostermiller said software methods in the '90s were borrowed from the Industrial Revolution. This process was known as "waterfall" since the steps used to build software proceeded in predefined steps. "That stuff wasn't working anymore," he said.
Local agilist and Inclusive Agile CEO Corissa Peck, who started her career during the late 90s, agreed the old processes were ineffective.
"Software is a human endeavor," she said, yet, it has been treated like a technological problem.
In 2001, Cockburn and his fellow lightweights wanted to do something about this problem. As Cockburn tried to bring these voices together in a summit at Snowbird, he received an email from Robert Martin, known in the software world as "Uncle Bob," who had the same idea. Cockburn realized Martin's agenda and invitee list were better than his, so he acquiesced and accepted.
However, there was only one thing wrong with Martin's proposal: The venue. Chicago?
On the frontier ... in Utah
On the week of Valentine's Day in 2001, the Snowbird 17, as they would be remembered, filed up Little Cottonwood Canyon, checked into the Snowbird Lodge and assembled in the Aspen Room. And then they started listening.
"We left our egos at the door," manifesto participant Jon Kern later remembered of the cooperation it took for all 17 to work together. He and a handful of others, including Cockburn, met online and in the Aspen Room in 2021 for a roundtable discussion on the 20th anniversary of the manifesto meeting.
Though like-minded, they represented diverse interpretations of the term "lightweight," giving their methodologies even more esoteric names like, SCRUM, XP, Crystal and Adaptive Software Development, to name a few. Finding out where these ideas ran together was their main objective.
"We were focusing on what we agreed on, not what we disagreed on," remembered James Grenning during the roundtable discussion, which was organized by Utah Agile and the Scrum Alliance. Others in the room agreed that keeping egos in check and practicing what Cockburn called "generous listening" helped them reach a consensus.
Generous listening was put to the test in a conversation between Cockburn and another attendee, Stephen Mellor.
"Steve was the enemy," remembered Cockburn. Mellor was a tools guy, and thus inherently opposed to most in the group. When introducing himself, he deftly diffused the tension caused by his presence by introducing himself as "a spy."
Later, Cockburn and another developer engaged Mellor in a conversation. They disagreed with Mellor's approach to modeling code as opposed to writing it. But after hearing him out, they realized Mellor's intentions were the same as theirs.
"At that instant, Steve moved from the other side of the table to our side," said Cockburn, "and we were in alignment." He believes no one person has ever taken credit for the four bullet points that became the manifesto — a true collaboration.
"We wordsmithed that to 100% unanimity," said Cockburn to the other members of the roundtable. A thumbs up signaled agreement with the words formed by the committee; a slightly tilted thumb spurred the question, "Ok, what's bothering you?"
The final product was a list of four common values:
- Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.
- Working software over comprehensive documentation.
- Customer collaboration over contract negotiation.
- Responding to change over following a plan.
To finish, they added a clause stating they preferred the values "on the left" over those "on the right." Little did they know, their words would be translated into languages not even written left-to-right.
We wordsmithed that thing to 100% unanimity.
–Alistair Cockburn, an Agile Manifesto author
After the conference, the group, which now called themselves Agile — a better name than "lightweight" — left the lodge and went back to their normal lives. Ward Cunningham published the manifesto online and, as almost an afterthought, Cockburn remembered, he allowed people to sign it digitally. The website now has hundreds of pages of signatures, symbolic of the effect Agile has had on the world.
The (new) future of software
Looking back 23 years, Cockburn said the values codified in the software manifesto had been practiced by its authors for almost a decade, yet they were new to the rest of the world. Values instead of prescribed steps were what stuck with people, he said.
"There's just something about this that has resonated," Ostermiller said. "Because it is principle and value-driven, they seem to stand the test of time."
Ostermiller has used these values, and the 12 principles later penned by the authors, to transform companies and organizations. In his experience, when organizations follow the values and principles of the manifesto, they see "early realization in value with a significant reduction in cost."
Since 2001, Agile has been used not only in software teams and organizations but also business, in general. These transformations have been thought to come in three waves. Peck believes that the fourth wave of Agile is psychological safety. Much like the respect the Snowbird 17 had for one another, this psychological safety is critical for Agile to work and central to her nonprofit's mission.
"You could have a whole room of hotheads, but if they can learn to see each other's humanity, if they can learn to listen and honor each other's different perspectives … I mean, that's the only way to move forward," Peck said.
Cockburn has since taught the Agile values in books and in person. He now consults around the world, teaching what he calls "the Heart of Agile."
While Cockburn admits Agile has been abused for profit, he realizes the good Agile has done around the world. Governments, villages, churches, schools and even families have benefited from Agile.
"That does good everywhere," Cockburn said of the Agile values — values which were written on a whiteboard, at a Utah ski resort in 2001 on the day Agile came to town.
