Agile's Timeline of Transformation
Agile's Journey Through the Decades
21 February 2025
BY SCOTT M. GRAFFIUS | ScottGraffius.com
Introduction
Agile has come a long way since its early days, evolving through decades of adaptation and innovation. What began as a response to rigid development practices has become a global movement, influencing industries beyond software. Along the way, principles and practices have shaped how teams collaborate and deliver value. This article (and the related infographic) takes you through Agile’s history, highlighting key moments that have defined its evolution. Discover the decades of transformation that keep Agile evolving and relevant in today’s world.
Agile Through the Decades
The 1950s
The 1960s
The 1970s
[Agile took a Disco Nap]
The 1980s
The 1990s
The 2000s
The 2010s to Present
Conclusion
Agile has continually evolved, proving its resilience and relevance across industries. It adapts to new challenges and innovations. And its core principles of collaboration, flexibility, and continuous improvement remain as vital as ever.
Scott M. Graffius developed a related infographic—'Agile's History, Visualized'—and released it via Exceptional Agility AI. It's also available here.
Many individuals and organizations have made valuable contributions to Agile. This article highlights select major milestones and is not intended to be an exhaustive list.
Read on for:
About Scott M. Graffius
Scott M. Graffius is a high impact and globally recognized AI, advanced technology, agile, and project management researcher, thought leader, author, and public speaker.
Graffius has generated more than USD $1.9 billion in business value for organizations served, including Fortune 500 companies. Businesses and industries range from technology (including R&D and AI) to entertainment, financial services, and healthcare, government, social media, and more.
Graffius leads the professional services firm Exceptional PPM and PMO Solutions, along with its subsidiary Exceptional Agility. These consultancies offer strategic and tactical advisory, training, embedded talent, and consulting services to public, private, and government sectors. They help organizations enhance their capabilities and results in agile, project management, program management, portfolio management, and PMO leadership, supporting innovation and driving competitive advantage. The consultancies confidently back services with a Delighted Client Guarantee™. Graffius is a former vice president of project management with a publicly traded provider of diverse consumer products and services over the Internet. Before that, he ran and supervised the delivery of projects and programs in public and private organizations with businesses ranging from e-commerce to advanced technology products and services, retail, manufacturing, entertainment, and more. He has experience with consumer, business, reseller, government, and international markets.
He is the author of two award-winning books.
Prominent businesses, professional associations, government agencies, and universities have featured Graffius and his work including content from his books, talks, workshops, and more. Select examples include:
Graffius has been actively involved with the Project Management Institute (PMI) in the development of professional standards. He was a member of the team which produced the Practice Standard for Work Breakdown Structures—Second Edition. Graffius was a contributor and reviewer of A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge—Sixth Edition, The Standard for Program Management—Fourth Edition, and The Practice Standard for Project Estimating—Second Edition. He was also a subject matter expert reviewer of content for the PMI’s Congress. Beyond the PMI, Graffius also served as a member of the review team for two of the Scrum Alliance’s Global Scrum Gatherings.
Graffius has a bachelor’s degree in psychology with a focus in Human Factors. He holds eight professional certifications:
He is an active member of the Scrum Alliance, the Project Management Institute (PMI), and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
He divides his time between Los Angeles and Paris, France.
Thought Leader | Public Speaker | Agile Scrum Book | Agile Transformation Book | Blog | Photo | X | LinkedIn | Email
How to Cite This Article
Graffius, Scott M. (2025, February 21). Agile's Journey Through the Decades. Available at: https://scottgraffius.com/blog/files/agile's-journey-through-the-decades.html.
Scott M. Graffius wrote this article. He wrote a related article at Exceptional Agility AI.
Copyright
Copyright © Scott M. Graffius. All rights reserved.
Content on this site—including text, images, videos, and data—may not be used for training or input into any artificial intelligence, machine learning, or automatized learning systems, or published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without the express written permission of Scott M. Graffius.
Introduction
Agile has come a long way since its early days, evolving through decades of adaptation and innovation. What began as a response to rigid development practices has become a global movement, influencing industries beyond software. Along the way, principles and practices have shaped how teams collaborate and deliver value. This article (and the related infographic) takes you through Agile’s history, highlighting key moments that have defined its evolution. Discover the decades of transformation that keep Agile evolving and relevant in today’s world.
Agile Through the Decades
The 1950s
- 1957: IBM began utilizing incremental development in software projects.
- 1958: Software for Project Mercury, the United States’ first human spaceflight program, was developed in half-day iterations.
The 1960s
- 1968: IBM’s Harlan Mills advocated for staged, incremental software development with continuous user involvement.
The 1970s
[Agile took a Disco Nap]
The 1980s
- 1980: Toyota introduced visual control, a predecessor to Agile’s information radiators.
- 1984: Leo Brodie described the concept of factoring, an early influence on code structuring.
- 1985: Tom Gilb introduced the Evolutionary Delivery Model, an alternative to the Waterfall methodology.
- 1986: The influential article "The New New Product Development Game" by Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka was published in the Harvard Business Review, laying the groundwork for Scrum.
- 1988: The timebox approach was central to DuPont’s Rapid Iterative Production Prototyping.
The 1990s
- 1990: Bill Opdyke coined the term refactoring, which became fundamental in Agile software development.
- 1991: James Martin described timeboxing and iterations, core components of Agile frameworks.
- 1993:Jim Coplien introduced the stand-up meeting pattern. Scrum was first used as a process by Jeff Sutherland, John Scumniotales, and Jeff McKenna at Easel Corporation.
- 1994: Alistair Cockburn advocated working in increments.
- 1995: Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland co-presented Scrum.
- 1997: Ken Schwaber described the daily Scrum.
- 1998: The Chrysler Goes to Extremes case study detailed Extreme Programming (XP) practices like self-chosen tasks, three-week iterations, and pair programming.
The 2000s
- 2000: Martin Fowler published an article defining continuous integration. Ken Schwaber introduced the burndown chart.
- 2001: Seventeen software development experts—Kent Beck, Mike Beedle, Arie van Bennekum, Alistair Cockburn, Ward Cunningham, Martin Fowler, Robert C. Martin, Steve Mellor, Dave Thomas, James Grenning, Jim Highsmith, Andrew Hunt, Ron Jeffries, Jon Kern, Brian Marick, Ken Schwaber, and Jeff Sutherland—formulated the Manifesto for Agile Software Development, emphasizing individuals and interactions, working software, customer collaboration, and responding to change. Mary Poppendieck highlighted Agile’s similarities with Lean manufacturing. Alistair Cockburn coined the term information radiator.
- 2005: Mike Cohn’s Agile Estimating and Planning introduced techniques such as Planning Poker.
- 2008: Kane Mar formally described backlog grooming. Jeff Patton introduced story mapping.
- 2009: The concept of DevOps emerged from John Allspaw and Paul Hammond’s talk on 10+ daily deployments, while Patrick Debois coined the term.
The 2010s to Present
- 2010: Dean Leffingwell and Drew Jemilo introduced the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), designed for enterprise-level Agile adoption.
Conclusion
Agile has continually evolved, proving its resilience and relevance across industries. It adapts to new challenges and innovations. And its core principles of collaboration, flexibility, and continuous improvement remain as vital as ever.
Scott M. Graffius developed a related infographic—'Agile's History, Visualized'—and released it via Exceptional Agility AI. It's also available here.
Many individuals and organizations have made valuable contributions to Agile. This article highlights select major milestones and is not intended to be an exhaustive list.
Read on for:
- About Scott M. Graffius,
- How to cite this article,
- and more.
About Scott M. Graffius
Scott M. Graffius is a high impact and globally recognized AI, advanced technology, agile, and project management researcher, thought leader, author, and public speaker.
Graffius has generated more than USD $1.9 billion in business value for organizations served, including Fortune 500 companies. Businesses and industries range from technology (including R&D and AI) to entertainment, financial services, and healthcare, government, social media, and more.
Graffius leads the professional services firm Exceptional PPM and PMO Solutions, along with its subsidiary Exceptional Agility. These consultancies offer strategic and tactical advisory, training, embedded talent, and consulting services to public, private, and government sectors. They help organizations enhance their capabilities and results in agile, project management, program management, portfolio management, and PMO leadership, supporting innovation and driving competitive advantage. The consultancies confidently back services with a Delighted Client Guarantee™. Graffius is a former vice president of project management with a publicly traded provider of diverse consumer products and services over the Internet. Before that, he ran and supervised the delivery of projects and programs in public and private organizations with businesses ranging from e-commerce to advanced technology products and services, retail, manufacturing, entertainment, and more. He has experience with consumer, business, reseller, government, and international markets.
He is the author of two award-winning books.
- His first book, Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions (ISBN-13: 9781533370242), received 17 awards.
- His second book is Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change (ISBN-13: 9781072447962). BookAuthority named it one of the best Scrum books of all time.
Prominent businesses, professional associations, government agencies, and universities have featured Graffius and his work including content from his books, talks, workshops, and more. Select examples include:
- Adobe,
- American Management Association,
- Amsterdam Public Health Research Institute,
- Bayer,
- BMC Software,
- Boston University,
- Broadcom,
- Cisco,
- Coburg University of Applied Sciences and Arts Germany,
- Computer Weekly,
- Constructor University Germany,
- Data Governance Success,
- Deimos Aerospace,
- DevOps Institute,
- EU's European Commission,
- Ford Motor Company,
- Gartner
- GoDaddy,
- Harvard Medical School,
- Hasso Plattner Institute Germany,
- IEEE,
- Innovation Project Management,
- Johns Hopkins University,
- Journal of Neurosurgery,
- Lam Research (Semiconductors),
- Leadership Worthy,
- Life Sciences Trainers and Educators Network,
- London South Bank University,
- Microsoft,
- NASSCOM,
- National Academy of Sciences,
- New Zealand Government,
- Oracle,
- Pinterest Inc.,
- Project Management Institute,
- SANS Institute,
- SBG Neumark Germany,
- Singapore Institute of Technology,
- Torrens University Australia,
- TBS Switzerland,
- Tufts University,
- UC San Diego,
- UK Sports Institute,
- University of Galway Ireland,
- US Department of Energy,
- US National Park Service,
- US Tennis Association,
- Veleučilište u Rijeci Croatia,
- Verizon,
- Virginia Tech,
- Warsaw University of Technology,
- Wrike,
- Yale University,
- and many others.
Graffius has been actively involved with the Project Management Institute (PMI) in the development of professional standards. He was a member of the team which produced the Practice Standard for Work Breakdown Structures—Second Edition. Graffius was a contributor and reviewer of A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge—Sixth Edition, The Standard for Program Management—Fourth Edition, and The Practice Standard for Project Estimating—Second Edition. He was also a subject matter expert reviewer of content for the PMI’s Congress. Beyond the PMI, Graffius also served as a member of the review team for two of the Scrum Alliance’s Global Scrum Gatherings.
Graffius has a bachelor’s degree in psychology with a focus in Human Factors. He holds eight professional certifications:
- Certified SAFe 6 Agilist (SA),
- Certified Scrum Professional - ScrumMaster (CSP-SM),
- Certified Scrum Professional - Product Owner (CSP-PO),
- Certified ScrumMaster (CSM),
- Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO),
- Project Management Professional (PMP),
- Lean Six Sigma Green Belt (LSSGB), and
- IT Service Management Foundation (ITIL).
He is an active member of the Scrum Alliance, the Project Management Institute (PMI), and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
He divides his time between Los Angeles and Paris, France.
Thought Leader | Public Speaker | Agile Scrum Book | Agile Transformation Book | Blog | Photo | X | LinkedIn | Email
How to Cite This Article
Graffius, Scott M. (2025, February 21). Agile's Journey Through the Decades. Available at: https://scottgraffius.com/blog/files/agile's-journey-through-the-decades.html.
Scott M. Graffius wrote this article. He wrote a related article at Exceptional Agility AI.
Copyright
Copyright © Scott M. Graffius. All rights reserved.
Content on this site—including text, images, videos, and data—may not be used for training or input into any artificial intelligence, machine learning, or automatized learning systems, or published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without the express written permission of Scott M. Graffius.