Back to Basics: What the Agile Manifesto Still Gets Right in the Age of AI

Many Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches have been cut loose, organizations are changing how they deliver products and services, and AI has landed on top of both. Kate Megaw, Anu Smalley and Ryan Smith open a new Back to Basics series with the document that started all of it, the Manifesto for Agile Software Development. They start with the obvious question. If it was written for software, what word belongs there now? Ryan says iterative development. Anu says iterative fill in the blank, because coaching a leader is iterative too. Then they go to the four values and pick favorites, and pretty much land on the same pair. Individuals and interactions, and responding to change, come out as the bookends that give the middle two somewhere to stand. Meanwhile AI is quietly pulling attention back toward the tools on the right and working software and customer collaboration are where teams are slipping.  The close is the useful part. This is not a rulebook to recite at people. It is a short piece of text that gives a team permission to work better.