While working at IBM Research, Alistair Cockburn had a simple directive: “Make things go better.”

It was the 1990’s and my first—and practically only—concern was whether my macaroni and cheese would have hot dogs in it. Luckily, people like Cockburn were thinking of more important things, creating new systems and methodologies for delivering valuable software, solutions and products.

With the invention of the internet, software development—especially web development—had really begun to take off. Customers and web developers didn’t always communicate well with each other, though, and misunderstandings about requirements would result in delays, wasted work and frustration. A customer request that seemed simple—make an application perform a certain function, for example—was usually loaded with hidden questions for the developer. “How should this task be accomplished?” “Does the function change in certain scenarios?” “What chain reaction is expected but not specified?” 

In what Cockburn would call “the birth of everything,” he began a quest from his home base in Utah, traveling from company to company and project to project to learn best practices for delivering software. “All of the projects that were following a process were not delivering software,” he says. “And all of the projects that were delivering software couldn’t say what they were doing.” In those days, it was considered a huge accomplishment to be able to ship software every two months.

At the end of Cockburn’s meetings, he noticed a pattern of simple, fundamental principles like overcommunicating between developers and customers. “Put a couple of people in a room together, let them talk to each other, let them talk to the customers on a regular basis,” he says. “Just talk to each other a lot, and show your code to the users a lot. And that’s the only rule. That’s it.”

Putting a process around something as organic as communication usually results in communication barriers, though.

Around this time, other frameworks began to pop up around the world—Scrum, Feature Driven Development and DSDM, among others. Cockburn became connected with Jim Highsmith, who also resided in Utah and had recently published a book called “Adaptive Software Development.” Cockburn and Highsmith often found themselves skiing together on Utah’s snowy slopes, explaining concepts to each other, drawing diagrams and coming up with new ideas.

Eventually, Robert Martin, founder of Object Mentor, organized these like-minded individuals, proposed a meetup, and created a manifesto. According to Cockburn, the thought of creating a manifesto was “the dumbest idea.” He agreed to attend, however, and convinced Martin to move the February 2001 meetup from Chicago to Snowbird resort in Utah, where everyone could at least go skiing.

Cockburn chuckles as he recalls this unique meeting. “We had 17 prima donna males in the room, and there was no expectation we would do anything other than fight,” he says. 

They didn’t, and it was magical. Cockburn attributes the magic to how well everyone listened to each other. It was a very positive, additive approach to creating the manifesto. They had no expectations as to how the world would receive the ideas or how the manifesto would spread to the rest of the world. Ward Cunningham, who created the website displaying the manifesto, included a form to collect signatures of people who agreed with it. According to Cockburn, signatures started rolling in and the group realized the manifesto might take off.

The Agile Manifesto is only 73 words long, but according to Zippia, the Agile methodology has a success rate 15 percent higher than traditional waterfall methods. At least 71 percent of U.S. companies are now using Agile.

Cockburn credits the lasting power of Agile to the proliferation of Scrum through Ken Schwaber, who organized Scrum-certified instructors. Scrum is the most popular Agile framework, with 61 percent of Zippia’s respondents from 76 countries reporting that they use it. Hundreds of thousands of students have earned professional Scrum certifications to date. Cockburn’s view on the certificates is complicated. “On the one hand, we have everybody complaining about these hoax certificates,” he says. “On the other hand, literally because of these certificates, we have thousands of people running around big corporations like Lookheed Martin…yelling, ‘Sprint, backlog, Scrum, impediment!’ They have forced the change in ways that all of us in the 90s couldn’t.”

Twenty-two years later, Cockburn says the most misunderstood thing about Agile is the last value in the manifesto: “We value responding to change over following a plan.”

“People see that and they think, ‘Oh man, Agile means I don’t have to make a plan! I love this Agile stuff.’” At the end of the day, Cockburn says, we still need plans, even though we know the plan will get out of sync soon. Then, we quickly make another plan. 

These days, Cockburn is busy with his own company and initiatives. He started the Heart of Agile to further expound on the popular Agile methodologies. He no longer lives in Utah, opting for the milder weather of Florida. Even Florida isn’t warm enough. “Cold Florida winters don’t work for me,” he says, so he drives down to Argentina during the winter months.