Creative Imitation

What started as a reactionary movement helps us understand why agile is so culturally significant today.

Agile was, in many ways, a rejection of the a status quo design process of the 80s and 90s. Before agile took hold, software was built through “waterfall” development, a process where something was coded entirely from detailed guides, descriptions, and manuals. Every aspect of the design was outlined at the very beginning of the project - then developers would fulfill the plan from start to finish. They didn’t allocate time toward changes, alterations, or deviations. In hindsight, we can see that this was rigid, and hierarchical.

The process was made for duplicating a plan rather than devising a solution. 

Developers had to produce a one-to-one match of the described vision, but, more often than not, this vision resulted in a product which didn’t help or even worse, just didn’t work. Recreating an exact vision months and years after it was designed can understandably leave unavoidable oversights and missed opportunities. The landscape keeps evolving as the designs remain static, and the by the time you finish your systems are obsolete.

The labor-intensive work taken to recreate through coding was reflective of one of the fundamental principles of art, mimesis, or “imitation”. With mimesis your aim is to build a form true to perception through exacting detail. The steps these waterfall-based programmers took strongly echo the work of classical artists to achieve mimesis, a copycat version of what they see in reality. 

Long before the agile manifesto took shape, creators had begun to reject similar academic, and hierarchical definitions of fine art. At the turn of the 20th century early modernists were already making waves, reacting to very similar strict creative conventions that these programmers would later face. 

The Modernist Adaptation

Modern artists adapted their own methods of subverting imitative design in an adaptive approach we can see reflected in agile development.

Before the emergence of modernism, the social convention of art was to “hold a mirror up to nature”, in a pretty literal sense. The modernist ideal was instead that to create, you must examine multiple contemporaneous perspectives. Consider how this concept was explained by Jacques Lipchitz ”[It’s] like standing at a certain point on a mountain and looking around. If you go higher, things will look different; if you go lower, again they will look different.”

Early modernists explored each perspective that formed a subject, and used these disparate angles to construct a single creative work. This revolutionary concept, that you cannot see the full perspective of a design from any singular point shifted art forever. Like the writers of the agile manifesto, modernists were compelled to change perspective to see the whole, and empower that wider lens.

Artists who participated in the modernist movement strike remarkable similarities to lean-agile values in how they describe their process. Georgia O’Keefe reflected “I often painted fragments of things because it seemed to make my statement as well as or better than the whole could.” It’s easy to correlate this to the later creation of user stories in scrum - where you build small, self-contained piece of functionality which each capture a statement of value.

Like agile, the modernist movement was about about revisiting past ideas through deconstruction and exploration rather than planning. Both stand as reaction movement to the same constricting theory of work, and both serve as steps to building more creatively and adaptively.

The Postmodernist Application

As time moved forward, postmodernists began to add their own spin on the discourse around design, connection and applied creativity.

Famed Afro-Futurist, and postmodernist Octavia Butler said: “Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not… You don’t start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it’s good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it.” Unlike Kent who focused on using design to express ideas and narratives through an iterative method of work, Butler applied agile theory within a cultural context and considered the impact. Her influence details how these creative principles can be applied towards reaching a concrete goal - rather than serving only to explore and experiment.

Butler considered the anti-authoritarian nature of change, and the importance of change as a method of widespread impact. She clarified that for there to be progress there needed to be goals guiding iteration and change, emphasizing setting visions of change to guide transformation rather than allowing change to follow a wandering course. She applied this to her own creativity - writing herself a vision:

“I will find the way to do this. See to it! So be it!”

This focus on transformative vision empowered iteration to drive forward with clear intention and vision. Other postmodernists applied these same principals; RIOT GRRRL’s influence on writing and art within zine culture in the 90s put these principles into practice with creation and message. The group’s manifesto describes creative collaboration as how we “see/hear each other's work so that we can criticize-applaud each other.”

This movement set a foundation of real human impact and the necessity of iteration and critique toward reaching goals within a community rather than purely serving an artistic pursuit. 

Iteration Rather Than Invention

In 2001 a small group of white, male software developers sat down in a room to create the “Agile Manifesto”.

We can’t know if any of those in the room were working in reference to the events and movements of agile theory that preceded them. It’s of course possible that all of these creators have reached this same conclusions independently and autonomously. The earliest creators and artists mentioned here were referential in their own work, and encouraged others to build off of their ideas. They weren’t protective or proprietary about these inventions.

They just wanted to see creative work empowered. But, in understanding the history that came before the agile manifesto, it is essential to recognize that the perception of “trendy”, “techy”, and often “elitist” that surrounds agile thinking is misplaced.

Diverse creators have contributed to this space for the past century, each embodying a philosophy of work driven by iteration, experimentation, analysis, and collaboration. 

When we view lean-agile theory as something recently “invented” we’re forgetting the nuance and the perspective gained by each of these different movements. Focusing on responsiveness, change, and collaboration was not invented as part of the dot com boom, and is even more tied to creativity than it is to technical production.

As we look ahead to the next iteration of agile theory we need to moving past the limitations of contemporary agile work. In its current practice, agile-lean methodology is leaving out core concepts that open the doors to so many. There are myriads of companies, organizations, creators, and non-profits who hold the same values as so many of these movements, and many of them would never considering their work “agile”, despite doing just that.

To evolve, serve, and thrive, agile theory needs to acknowledge and recognize these shared perspectives, while focusing on a collective, rather than industry-based vision of creative work.

What It’s Really About

What stands out most, reflecting on the varied and often times unrecognized history of this movement, is what creators like Sister Corita Kent, and Octavia Butler would want us to know about agile design and creativity. Their words are not full of jargon, or married to technology. They share the message that we as a society have come to know as agile-lean design, but they explain it in a way that’s self-evident, and intuitive. They open doors, rather than selling keys.

The vision they paint is one of collective work focused on making transformative change. They teach us that letting go of an idea can be it’s own form of progress, and that improvement comes from active reflection rather than a singular grand vision.

Their ideas are more inclusive and far broader than what we’ve come to understand as “agile-lean methodology”. This history demonstrates what about this theory of work is effective, and why. It gives us a stronger, more versatile approach to enacting change together.

If you’re interested in finding out more about this you can read more here…

Why Don’t We Just Call Agile What It Is: Feminist by Hanna Thomas Uose

This is Not A Copy: Writing at the Iterative Turn by Kaja Marczewska

Sister Corita Kent’s Rules For Creatives – Why They Matter Today