The Agile Modeling Manifesto: Is the time ripe?
The subject of the email from LieberLieber piqued my curiosity: "A Manifesto for Agile Modeling". In the following, I examine what this is all about.
To get straight to the point: LieberLieber , a company specializing in modeling, presented the manifesto in September at the Swissed 2019 as part of the presentation "Agile Modeling in Safety-Critical Environments" (PDF). It appears there on slide 22:
In the lecture, the author describes, Konrad Wielandhow agile working can be used in the development of safety-critical systems. This is because there are many challenges that do not exist in the "traditional" agile approach, such as carrying out safety analyses. Wieland sees models as vital here - a view with which I also agree.
At this point, Wieland examines how we can learn from successful agile software development in order to also benefit from agility in complex system development. He quickly arrives at the need to have information available in a structured form, which can also be versioned accordingly and expanded in various directions via branches. He then identifies continuous integration (CI) as a core concept of agile development and transfers this to the model-based approach as follows:
After each iteration (or better, after each change), a useful model must exist.
According to Wieland, the manifesto shown above is the way to ensure this.
Repurpose existing tools
Agile software development was possible with the tools available at the time - they just had to be used differently. In the same way, agile MBSE is possible with existing tools. It is of course not surprising that the software distributed by LieberLieber is used (slide 25: Enterprise Architect, LemonTree, git). This is a sensible and pragmatic approach.
Nevertheless, the Agile Modeling Manifesto still needs to be filled with life. And that brings us to an important point that I am missing a little:
Where is the community?
The original Agile Manifesto was so successful in part because it was signed by 17 heavyweights in software development, such as Jeff Sutherland, Kent Beck and Martin Fowler. And they not only signed it, but also wrote books, organized training courses and continued their research.
In this respect, I was a little disappointed that the development of a corresponding community was not addressed - at least not on the slides.
Some ideas need several attempts
This is certainly not the first attempt to set up a manifesto for modeling. For example, in April last year, the OMG published a Model Based Engineering (MBE) Manifesto which is now being developed further:
With a twinkle in our eye, in 2017 we also had the 2. modeling camp Coffee cups with a manifesto distributed:
In any case, this shows that there are many people who want a manifesto for agile modeling. Many good ideas need several attempts. I would be delighted if one of these manifestos really takes root at some point.
Photo by Miguel Bruna on Unsplash
