The Project Manager's Guide to Mastering Agile, 2nd Edition

11The Roots of Agile

AN AGILE PROJECT MANAGER NEEDS TO UNDERSTAND the roots of Agile and how Agile thinking evolved, in order to gain a deeper understanding of why it makes sense. The roots of Agile go fairly deep, but there are two major sources that had the most impact on its development:

• Total Quality Management (TQM) was probably the strongest factor in influencing the Agile approach to quality.
• Lean Manufacturing was probably the biggest factor in influencing Agile process thinking.

Each of those influences will be discussed in this chapter.

INFLUENCE OF TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT (TQM)

Total Quality Management had a significant impact on how quality is managed in an Agile environment:

• Many of the Agile principles related to quality have their roots in the philosophy of Total Quality Management (TQM). The TQM philosophy originated from the ideas of W. Edwards Deming and others. Although TQM was originally developed for a manufacturing organization, it’s fairly easy to see how those same principles are equally relevant to a software development environment.
• Dr. Deming was an American statistician who was credited with the rise of Japan as a manufacturing nation. His principles transformed the Japanese automotive industry into developing high‐quality products that gained a significant market share against American automotive manufacturers in the 1970s and 1980s (see Figure 11.1).

Dr. Deming’s original 14 points can be summarized into five major areas that have a significant ...