Tom Peters is often quoted with the words “Soft is Hard, Hard is Soft” – indicating that the difficulties in leadership are the “soft-science” of working with people. Tom’s the man! As an executive (humans with power) coach, I am often confronted with the soft side (human issues) of creating solutions (software with human interfaces) for customers (more humans with issues). Where is the human resources team when you need them?

The benefit (and issues) of agile methods is that they focus you (me) on the human side of application development. Agile recognizes the human elements necessary for creating innovative solutions and leverages them. It breaks down the barriers we are comfortable hiding behind and exposes our a___ (if we are not careful). Get out of the 90’s, we can’t hide behind processes anymore!

Each statement of the Agile Manifesto focuses on the human side of software development over the artifacts, processes and  tools we tend to hide behind. I will highlight just one of them today…

Individuals and interactions over process and tools
In your face and deal with it! People, relationships, behavior, psychology, group dynamics, feelings, emotions, attitudes, personalities, communication, introverts, extroverts, judgments, power, powerless, control, trust, it just goes on and on.

It is much easier for an engineer to hide behind a defect tracking tool, source code management tool or requirements management tool than actually talking with the quality engineer, development partner or customer. We (engineers, project managers, managers) have had years of training and experiences in working with computers, communicating with documents, email, instant messaging, blogging, online shopping, and online dating.

How are we (am I) suppose to come out from behind our (my) computers (phones, PDA’s, IPods)? How are we (am I) supposed to share a room with them (coworkers) and be more productive? Ha! Good luck. We (I) got into this business because we (I) like to work with computers.

You get the point
The other statements in the Agile Manifesto are “customer collaboration over contract negotiation”, “working software over comprehensive documentation” and “responding to change over following a plan”. Without ranting any further (and playing the coach that I am), I will let you extrapolate the human side of each of these.

Software development is hard because it requires mastering the soft side (right brain, creative, complex, out-of-the-box, illogical, irrational) of humans. Agile is just a set of principles that recognize this and provide you a roadmap to help you gain value from them (humans).

Technology has brought us closer to others in the world (the world is flatter) and yet more distant to those around us. The 90’s taught us that we could correct people with process. We know now that doesn’t work. If we master the human side of application development, we can maximize our business value.

Related Reading
Recent blog by Shabnam Tashakour on Agile Advice – nice description Related article of Emotional Intelligence with respect to being an Agile Executive - good overview, non-software related