Have you heard of the Agile Manifesto? It was published in 2001 when 17 blokes who work in tech came together to come up with a consolidated way of working. They came up with 12 principles which still hold up today. It’s worth a read.
This blog is digging into the archives and asking the question; where are they now? It is in alphabetical order by surname.
Kent Beck
He’s got a wikipedia page, I wonder how many of these blokes have their own wikipedia page? Author of the extreme programming series, which I’ve heard still holds up today.
You could also watch his recent YOW! Conference keynote presentation from 2018:
You can check out my sketchnotes of his talk here:
Mike Beedle
He also has a wikipedia page, he died in 2018, he got stabbed. Ouch, my condolences to his family and the community. At least he didn’t have to experience the dumpster fire that is 2020.
Arie van Bennekum
Alistair Cockburn
Ward Cunningham
Most of these blokes have a wikipedia page. But here’s the first one in this list to have a TEDx talk:
Martin Fowler
I often reference Martin Fowler’s content on my blog. I’ve also seen this bloke give a few presentations here in the land down under too:
James Grenning
Has published a book on TDD for embedded chips. Here’s a talk for TDD for embedded systems (I’m a sucker for a good testing talk):
Jim Highsmith
Andrew Hunt
I’ve been meaning to read the pragmatic programmer. Rubber ducking as a debug method was coined in that book and referenced in this talk:
Ron Jeffries
I’m following Ron on twitter, his blog on space invaders and testing seems to be a bit of fun to read. Does everything have to be a user story?
Jon Kern
He doesn’t have a SSL cert on his blog, well my old blog has had the SSL cert expire so I can’t blame him.
Brian Marick
Robert C. Martin
There’s a bit of controversy around “Uncle Bob”. I’ve previously mentioned some of these issues. So I won’t say too much but he’s been “cancelled” for a recent conference and then threatened to sue. Lovely stuff.
Steve Mellor
Ken Schwaber
If you want a bit of context on the term of Scrum, here is a good talk:
Jeff Sutherland
He’s also got a TEDx talk:
Dave Thomas
Finally I’ll leave you an Agile is Dead talk by Dave Thomas. It’s probably one of the most viewed software engineering talks on youtube that I’ve seen since I started putting this blog post together (over 1.2 million views):
Conclusion
Surprisingly, only one of these blokes is confirmed as dead. And there is a serious lack of diversity in this group. However they have all been instrumental in current development practices. Who hasn’t heard of Agile?
So who do you think is driving software development further these days?
