Agile Manifesto: Principles of Modern Software Development

What is this page about?

The Agile Manifesto was written in February 2001 when seventeen software developers met at Snowbird, Utah and produced 68 words of values and twelve principles that reshaped how software is built. This page explains the problem they were reacting to (long planning cycles, heavy documentation, slow sequential processes), walks through all four values and twelve principles, and traces the methods that grew from them such as Scrum and Extreme Programming. It then covers the more critical history: the "Agile Industrial Complex" of certifications and consultants, the post-Agile movement, and why the original manifesto still matters.

What has been corrected on this page?

Every accepted correction to this page is recorded with the exact change, so readers can see how the page improved over time.

1. 30 July 2026 · corrected by Melik Can Sariyer

   Corrected several statistics that were embellished or misattributed relative to their real sources, and one meta-analysis citation that could not be verified.

   What the page claimed

   Article embellished an Association for Project Management survey finding, attached a specific precise productivity figure to Jeff Sutherland's book that could not be verified in his documented claims, described a specific research finding attributed to GitLab and Buffer's remote-work reports that could not be verified in either, misdated a Haystack Analytics burnout survey and altered one of its statistics, distorted McKinsey Digital's technical debt research, misattributed a feature-usage statistic partly to 'Pragmatic Marketing' (both figures actually trace to the Standish Group), cited a 2021 meta-analysis by 'Diebold, Ostberg, Wagner, and Zendler' that could not be verified, and misattributed a Scrum-usage statistic to a Scrum Alliance survey when it actually comes from Digital.ai's State of Agile report.

   What was corrected

   Softened the APM claim to match its actual published finding, replaced Sutherland's specific figure with an accurate description of his book's argument and its case-study-based support, replaced the GitLab/Buffer claim with an accurate description of what those reports actually document, corrected the Haystack Analytics survey's year and the misattributed statistic to reflect its real finding (pandemic-worsened burnout, not overwork as the stated cause), corrected the McKinsey Digital description to match its actual technical-debt research framing, corrected the unused-features statistic to attribute both figures to the Standish Group, removed the unverifiable meta-analysis citation while preserving the general research consensus it was meant to illustrate, and corrected the Scrum-usage statistic's source attribution to Digital.ai.

   Why: Verified against PMI's Pulse of the Profession reports, the APM's published 2022 agile research, Haystack Analytics' original 2021 burnout study, McKinsey Digital's published technical-debt research, Standish Group feature-usage citations, and Digital.ai's State of Agile report series; no corroborating source could be found for a 2021 Diebold, Ostberg, Wagner, and Zendler meta-analysis of 44 Agile studies.

   View the full record →
2. 11 July 2026 · corrected by Melik Can Sariyer

   No 'Bob Hartman' organized/facilitated Snowbird; the meeting is usually credited to Robert C. Martin with logistics by Cockburn and Fowler.

   Before

   The meeting was organized by Kent Beck, who had developed Extreme Programming, and facilitated by Bob Hartman.

   After

   The gathering grew out of an invitation typically credited to Robert C. Martin, with organizational help from Alistair Cockburn and Martin Fowler.

   Why: Removed the unverified claim that a 'Bob Hartman' organized/facilitated the 2001 Snowbird meeting; no such figure is credited with organizing the gathering. The meeting is usually credited to an invitation from Robert C. Martin, with logistical help from Alistair Cockburn and Martin Fowler. Verified live on whennotesfly.com: the article body already correctly reads this way, and the FAQ JSON-LD, excerpt, meta_description, and seo_keywords fields contain no mention of Bob Hartman or any organizer/facilitator name, so no secondary-location fabrication was found.

   View the full record →

Who checked this page?

1 contributor has checked "Agile Manifesto: Principles of Modern Software Development" on When Notes Fly. Each name below links to that person's public CitePep profile, where every contribution they have made is listed with the exact change they proposed.