At gap intelligence, we pride ourselves on consistently living up to our values – Transparency, Willingness, Ownership, Passion, and Professionalism. We hold ourselves and each other accountable for acting on these core values in everything that we do both personally and professionally. We also adopted a values-led approach when it comes to software development.
https://www.knowledgehut.com/blog/agile/agile-manifesto-principles-values
The Agile Manifesto
In early 2001, a group of 17 representatives from across the global software development community, self-titled “The Agile Alliance,” got together and ultimately created The Agile Manifesto. The manifesto consists of four core values and is supported by twelve agile principles. The manifesto reads:
“We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:
- Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
- Working software over comprehensive documentation
- Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
- Responding to change over following a plan
That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.”
The Agile Manifesto maintains that people and functional software should always be valued above and beyond complicated red tape and arbitrary deadlines.
Twelve Agile Principles
The following twelve principles exist to help support these values in everyday practices:
https://nicocasel.net/blog/why-i-feel-natural-with-agile-principles/
These principles are a helpful way to measure how “agile” your working environment and methodology actually are. My favorite principle (is it weird to have a favorite?) and in my opinion the most important, is number twelve. I even feel like it’s my new life mantra (that probably also seems weird but hear me out). The twelfth principle is all about “inspect and adapt.” It stresses the importance of regularly taking the time to reflect on how things are going, how they can be adjusted, and coming up with creative ways to improve. Our ProdDev team does this all the time – in our daily stand ups, at our backlog refinements, and especially at our sprint reviews. We got together recently to specifically review the Agile Manifesto and determine how agile we’re and where we can improve.
Not only is this principle helpful for developing software, but it can be applied to almost anything. Maybe you’re doing the same task every week at work. Take the opportunity to really examine this task and decide if there’s a better way of going about it or a way that you can make it more valuable. I always keep those three words, “inspect and adapt,” in the back of my mind and apply them as often as possible to whatever I’m working on or going through. This can even be applied to something such as spin class. I have an instructor who will say, “We’re about to do the same thing again, how does that change your approach?” after we’ve completed a challenging sprint or climb. It’s a great time to reflect on what just happened and make a change to my resistance, position, or even my mindset. See? Works for everything! Try it out for yourself and let me know how it goes!
For more than 16 years, gap intelligence has served manufacturers and sellers by providing world-class services monitoring, reporting, and analyzing the 4Ps: prices, promotions, placements, and products. Email us at info@gapintelligence.com or call us at 619-574-1100 to learn more.
