I came across something intriguing in my blog’s analytics dashboard. Somebody came to cathycarleton.com from Google yesterday on the keyword phrase “agile development minus the lingo”. Hmmm. Sorry visitor, you probaby didn’t find what you were looking for.

I wrote a couple of articles about agile lingo last year, meant to help non-technical business types understand the development teams that build their ideas into reality. But those articles assume the organization is using familiar Agile terms like scrum, sprint, backlog, various types of programming, etc.

My visitor’s search phrase brings up a good question – what if they don’t? Is it still Agile?

Rapid deployment, continuous improvement, and collaborative building all embrace the spirit of Agile regardless of what they’re called. Organizations that use these methods walk the walk, even if they don’t talk the talk. But what about philosophy? Can a repertoire of Agile-friendly practices by itself qualify a group as an Agile shop, even if they don’t specifically pledge fealty to the Agile Manifesto? Can they be Agile without formally declaring themselves to be part of the worldwide Agile community?

Sure. Agile is as Agile does.

So go ahead – call the scrum “morning progress bagel nosh”. Hell, call the release Tila Tequila if you want. Alistair Cockburn, who’s smarter than all of us put together (including Tila Tequila), has advocated scrapping the term “requirements” altogether and using the verb phrase “deciding what to build“. That’s actually better, isn’t it? Who wants to slog through requirements? But people will wait in line to help in deciding what to build. They’ll even bring the bagels.