Agile Luminaries Gather to Celebrate 10-Year Anniversary of the Agile Manifesto

BOULDER, Colo., Feb. 2, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Rally®, the leader in Agile application lifecycle management (ALM), today announced its sponsorship of an exclusive event celebrating the 10-Year Anniversary of the Agile Manifesto. The Manifesto for Agile Software Development, which promotes development that accommodates changing requirements, collaboration with customers and delivery of software in short iterations, was forged on February 12, 2001, by 17 software development evangelists.

This group of developers, who represented several different programming methodologies, convened at Snowbird ski resort in Utah 10 years ago to address the need for alternative software development processes. The signatories of the Agile Manifesto found consensus around a set of values and practices that, in the January 2010 report "Agile Development: Mainstream Adoption Has Changed Agility," independent analyst firm Forrester Research, Inc. said, "…have rapidly joined the mainstream of development approaches."

The anniversary event will be held on February 12, 2011 at the Lodge at Snowbird ski resort, the same date and location that the Agile Manifesto was signed 10 years ago. Dr. Alistair Cockburn, one of the original Agile Manifesto authors, will host an open discussion with a few dozen experienced people from varied development backgrounds about the state of the software development industry.

"I'm excited to bring together interesting and thoughtful people who have been developing software for a long time," said Dr. Cockburn. "Besides the celebration of the original event, our theme is 'Solved, Solvable and Unsolvable Problems,' which I hope will produce a working agenda - broader than just agile development - for the next 10 years in our industry."

The proposed challenge for participants of the 10-Year event is to address these three questions:

1. What problems in software or product development have we solved?
2. What problems are fundamentally unsolvable?
3. What problems can we sensibly address – problems that we can mitigate either with money, effort or innovation?

The community is encouraged to participate in the celebration before, during and after the event. Visit the '10-Years of the Agile Manifesto' web site to join the dialog, post photos of agile development in action, or co-sponsor the event. Follow and contribute to the discussion on Twitter using the hashtag  #10yrsagile.

"When I started Rally back in 2002, I saw the factor of four increase in value delivery agile methods brought to a small team, and bet that we could bring this same power to large corporations," said Ryan Martens, Rally's founder and CTO. "Ten years later, we have proven that agile and lean methods can scale to coordinate very large programs. As we look to the next decade, I am convinced that empowered teams, with people who actually want to come to work, are essential for solving our biggest and most complex problems.  At Rally, we're working every day with our customers to create these empowered teams and inspire continuous innovation and collaboration in their business. We call it Rallying!"

The celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Agile Manifesto continues at the Agile 2011 Conference, the premier conference on software agility, scheduled for August 7 - 13 in Salt Lake City. Designed to bring together the Agile development community, Agile 2011 offers a platform for discussing how the Agile Manifesto has impacted the software development industry over the last decade.

"The Agile Alliance is dedicated to promoting the principles outlined in the Manifesto, including delivering higher value faster, which results in making the software industry more productive, humane and sustainable," said Phil Brock, managing director of the Agile Alliance. "We look forward to continuing the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Agile Manifesto at Agile 2011, reflecting upon its impact and looking forward to what the next decade has in store for the software development industry."

In support of advancing Agile development principles and practices, Rally joins the International Consortium for Agile, Santeon Corporation, Applied Connectioneering, IBM and VersionOne as a sponsor of the 10-Year Anniversary of the Agile Manifesto. Five independent signatories of the Agile Manifesto have confirmed their attendance, including Mike Beedle, Alistair Cockburn, James Grenning, Jon Kern, and Jeff Sutherland.

About Rally

Rally is the recognized leader in Agile application lifecycle management (ALM). We are dedicated to helping organizations embrace Agile and Lean development practices that increase the pace of innovation and improve product quality. According to a study by QSM Associates, software-driven companies that rely on Rally's Agile ALM products and services are 50% faster to market and 25% more productive than industry averages. The company's experienced services group, including training through Agile University, guides companies through the organizational change required to become innovative, Agile businesses. Rally's products, including AgileZen, currently support more than 2,500 corporate customers, 82,000 projects and 154,000 users in 60 countries. For more information, visit www.rallydev.com.

Rally, the Rally logo, Rally Software Development, and AgileZen are trademarks of Rally Software Development Corp. Third-party trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE Rally Software