After the Agile Manifesto, Stop Writing Any More. Please.

I saw the Agile Manifesto again for the hundredth time in a presentation the other day. I had to sigh. There was a time when writing a manifesto was hip, cute, happening, slick, rocking, phat, funky, gnarly, heinous, and totally bodaciously awesome. You had a major, earth-shaking point to make. It wasn’t just an essay, or a list of points, or a rant, damnit, it was a freaking manifesto. You are going to change the world! This is important! Listen to me!

That time was 100 years ago. Since then, just like the words “awesome” and “heinous”, the word “manifesto” has completely lost its meaning. We have killed it. Everybody’s manifesto crazy. It’s time to stop it already.

The dictionary defines manifesto as “A public declaration of policy and aims, esp. one issued before an election by a political party or candidate.” but the implication here is clear: it’s a public, political, groundbreaking work. Something of major importance. Clouds do not have a manifesto, nor do gophers.

I think I noticed this pestilence of manifestos approaching sometime around 1996, when Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, was captured. When the FBI raided his cabin, they found hundreds of pages of hand-scribbled ranting from Kaczynski about the evils of government and why he felt like blowing up people. Reporters, eager to pump up the Unabomber story to the highest levels possible, called this work “The Unabomber Manifesto.”

It was all downhill from there.

Google shows over 61 million results for the search term “manifesto”. Going through the first 100 pages of search results and just trying to pick out the interesting/funny ones, I get well over a hundred. I ran out of space for open tabs on the top of my browser. Going through that list and trying to pick out the interesting ones: (you can skip to the end if you don’t like long lists)

• Manifestos about open science. You could argue these qualify as manifestos in a strict sense, although I am doubtful. But since I support the cause, so here are some of them: The Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto. Bantuists’ Manifesto. The Slow Science Manifesto asks everybody to just leave scientists alone and give them time to think up stuff. That sounds like an excellent idea.




• There are more technology-related manifestos than you can shake a stick at. A few of note are the Javascript Manifesto, the Hacker Manifesto, the Gnu Manifesto, the Web Thinking Manifesto, and the Photoshop Etiquette Manifesto. Let’s not forget the somewhat famous Manifesto for Software Craftsmanship.




• I’m not sure what the Europe Arts Advocacy Group wants, but they get the award for most noisy manifesto. My eyes! My eyes!




• What could be more politically important than sports? There’s the Hoops Manifesto, for those of you who like basketball. Or, if you’re more into Fantasy Football, there’s the Draft Day Manifesto. Or the Free Market Sports Fan Manifesto.




• Looking to listen to some tunes while reading this list? Quite a few bands have “manifesto” in their name. Take the “Redneck Manifesto“, for instance. Nothing more politically important than singing rednecks. Rednecks unite!




• You’d think that the logical place for a real manifesto would be a book. There’s the “Checklist Manifesto” Who can forget the “Motherhood Manifesto“, or the “Win Without Pitching Manifesto?” Finally there’s the highly-rated “Student Success Manifesto.” Important, perhaps, but not manifestos.




• If you don’t want to support the man by buying books, you’ll support the Fiction Liberation Front Manifesto which says it’s about time Lewis Shiner started publishing his fiction for free. Rock on, Lewis!




• Maybe you have your own book project which isn’t getting done. You should join the “Cult of Done” which, like many other groups, has a manifesto.




• Or go for a ride on your bike. Planet Bike has a manifesto to tell us how they feel about bicycles. A manifesto? For guys who sell bikes? As it turns out, looking at the search results, there are hundreds of business manifestos, especially in the technology sector.




• But taking time off is important too, I guess. The Sabbath manifesto is a nice little list of ten bullet points about taking a day off every week.




• And what better to do with your time off than fish? The Fiberglass Manifesto is a blog about some guy who likes fiberglass fishing rods. A true statement of major societal import if there ever was one.




• If you’re not careful with all this relaxing, you too could end up with your own manifesto. That’s what happened to Maureen Johnson. She accidentally developed a manifesto on the way to a conference while sitting in a taxi. Something-or-another about social media. Perhaps she should have been fishing.




• If I’m starting to sound too skeptical about this plethora of manifestos, here’s one for me: a Skeptical Manifesto just for me.




• “Typography is dead. You have killed it..” begins the Post-Typographic Manifesto. I did?




• The Cannibal Manifesto is completely unintelligible. Might be time to remind somebody to remember to take the little blue pill each morning.




• If all this poking fun of manifestos and writers is making you feel guilty, how about the “Amoral Manifesto” to reassure you that being amoral really isn’t that bad.




• If that doesn’t help alleviate your anxiety, there’s always chemical relaxation. Smoke pot or drink? You’ve got your own manifestos (was there any doubt?): there’s the “Elkhorn Manifesto” which connects pot, Hitler, and a worlwide plot to destroy mankind. The Good Graph Wine Manifesto, which looks like a blog by a guy who likes to kick back with a bottle of wine, probably, what else, Manifesto Wine. If that’s not strong enough for you, there’s always the Sour Mash Manifesto.




• There’s “A Zombie Manifesto: The Nonhuman Condition in the Era of Advanced Capitalism” but they want 15 bucks to read the article. No thanks. I’ll wait until zombies start publicly publishing their manifestos. At this rate, it won’t be long.




• On Facebook there’s “A Manifesto for Conscious Men.” Easy enough to qualify for that one. Unless you’re a zombie.




• The Society for Cutting up Men has a manifesto. I did not read this. It looked like something that would give me bad dreams.




• Speaking of dreams, the “Dream Manifesto,” promises to “…Unlock the emerging power within you to manifest lasting change in your life and society. Use the latest technology and discoveries in quantum physics to create an extraordinary life. Be the change you want to see!…” Huh?




• Finally. There it is, on page 76 of the search: the Gopher Manifesto. It has nothing to do with furry gophers, which was a little bit disappointing. But for all I know the furry gophers have their own manifesto, I just didn’t have time to find it.

The Agile Manifesto was the Beginning of the End

From looking at the dates on these entries, it’s obvious to me that the Unabomber might have started the trend but the Agile Manifesto kicked it into high gear. I think one of the reasons the word “manifesto” took off so much was that the Agile Manifesto was so popular. People were fed up with the old ways of doing software development. They were upset. That’s why it’s especially overused in the tech community, in tech blogs, and in tech company mission statements. If you’re a nerd and you’re upset about something, you want your own manifesto. Sorry, you can’t have it.

Look. I like a lot of these. Who doesn’t like the Tau Manifesto that urges us to replace pi, the humorous Manifesto for Half-Arsed Agile Software Development, or David Brooks’ wonderful Modesty Manifesto (A favorite.) These are good, important works.

But damn, folks. Enough already. As it turns out, clouds DO have their own manifesto, and after reading the Manifesto of the Cloud Appreciation Society, I think we’re done with this word for a while. If “manifesto” means everything, it means nothing.

I’m not saying that what you’ve written isn’t insightful, intelligent, or deserving to be read. What’s happening, though, is that writers are overusing the word in a very sad attempt to make their work sound more important than it actually is. Maybe the world gets a real manifesto once every 30 or 40 years. Odds are yours isn’t it. Please don’t be a manifesto writer. Just tell us what you want, what your dreams are, what ticks you off — like I’m doing right now. But enough with the manifestos already. Please.

For Technical Works, Instead of Writing a New Agile Manifesto, Tell, then Show

The worst part about this overuse is that it is designed to put our brain in neutral. As technologists, we need to fix the mess we’ve made.

When I started on the Tiny Giant Book series, I was pretty fed up with a lot of Agile writing. It was too much manifesto, too little substance. As an Agile coach, I’ve seen what too much emotional reasoning can do to teams. It’s not pretty. The Agile and Scrum communities are full of folks who just want to “tear it all down”. Yes, technology development is broken. Yes, I understand your frustration. But there are too many books out there that appeal to your desire to change at the expense of providing you with instructions, data, and ideas. As an alternative I would suggest that books (and blogs) first make some emotional claim to hook the reader, then continue to appeal to the emotional response of readers by slowly unveiling the data. Finally make concrete suggestions about exactly how readers are to proceed, complete with easy-to-understand acceptance criteria. That way the reader walks away from the work with something they can immediately use. This is a much better format than this manifesto-madness.

Because I feel that the results of the Agile Manifesto eventually might have political implications, okay fine, if you insist, I’m willing to call it a true manifesto, but no more — that’s it.

February 1, 2012

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged agile, agile manifesto.