Saying thank you for agile manifesto

· March 30, 2015

Agile   Life of a consultant   Indonesia

Last autumn I met one of the signatories of the Agile Manifesto in real life. At the Agile Singapore conference.

I didn’t think much about that until he (James Grenning) mentioned it in the beginning of one of his talk. He told some anectodes about that meet-up. In honestly so would I if I was at that weekend in Snowbird.

There I was. Also a speaker at this conference half-around the world. Working with management for the Salvation Army in Indonesia, being invited to the conference since I’ve written a book on Kanban.

The last 10 years of my career has been involving agile in one way or the other on a daily basis. And evolving me for the better, mostly daily.

You know where this is going: I just had to thank him.

In fact I vowed there and then that I would make it a goal to meet as many signatories of the Agile Manifesto, as possible. I wanted them to know that for me my life changed totally due to those ideas.

So I went up to Mr Grenning and said:

Sir Grenning, sir. I just wanted to thank you for writing the agile manifesto. It changed me and my life forever. I have a much more fun working life due to it. Thank you!

His answer was priceless:

First of all - it’s Jim. Secondly I was just there to ski - it change me too :)

Time is running out

Jim (thanks) Grenning is the only of the signatories that I’ve met / seen in person. I’ve been doing agile for ca 9-10 years. This is simply too slow.

But this is a non-centralized world and most of these people are still around and active. I will now instead start to track these people down on other media, such as Twitter etc.

Not because I’m a fan boy (…. or well) but mostly because it’s actually the biggest defining thing in my career. One of the few watershed things, with a before and after for me. I’m not saying that they thought me everything I know and I know that I’ve brought my own thinking to the table but they put me on the path.

For this I’m eternally grateful. My working life is so much more interesting due to agile.

The list

People I’ve met and thanked in real life

James Grenning

Ah… well see above

Arie van Bennekum

I met Arie, in a corridor at Agile People 2019 and I was a treat to say Thank you to him and see that he 1) is still doing agile and 2) was passionate about it.

Signatories I’ve at least said ‘Thank you’ to

Robert C. Martin

Ron Jeffries

Martin Fowler

Kent Beck

Ward Cunningham

Jeff Sutherland

Ken Schwaber

Alistair Cockburn

Mike Beedle

Arie van Bennekum

Andrew Hunt

Dave Thomas

Brian Marick

Jim Highsmith

Jon Kern

Steve Mellor

… is not on Twitter. I sent him an email and got a very nice answer

Signatories I haven’t yet thanked

None! Phew - that feels so much better. My work is done! Now just get on to move them from the twitter list to the IRL-list.

Twitter, Facebook