Introduction to Agile..the Egyptain way

The word agile itself is very similar to the word Aa'gel in Arabic (which means soon) and it is defined in the English dictionaries as Mentally quick or alert.

"The reason most people never reach their goals is that they don't define them, or ever seriously consider them as believable or achievable. Winners can tell you where they are going, what they plan to do along the way, and who will be sharing the adventure with them" Denis Watley

Agile software development methodologies emerged from tons of lessons learnt by IT soldiers and leaders to provide efficient solutions to the road blocks that usually face their projects.

Though the IT technology dates back to the late fifties, people working in that industry rarely had enough courage to face the real cause behind the failure (fully or partially) of the projects. I consider delivering a project a day after its due time a partial failure. And that was what really pushed me towards expanding my horizons and engaging in a raging war against the dusty clichés of the software mentalities in Egypt.

Let's consider this example; the time is 8 pm in elkasr El3iny Street downtown on a late day of Ramadan. The race is between Contestant A, who is on foot and free to use any public transportation method; Contestant B who is driving a Mercedes S350. The roads are practically blocked as it happens to be a football match on that particular night at Cairo stadium.

The target is to travel from elkasr El3iny Street to the end of makram Abeid Street in the shortest time possible.
Contestant B drives proudly his 3500 cc car to towards the 6th October bridge and get stuck there for almost an hour. After he finishes the bridge he continues to get delayed by the traffic jam to increase his trip duration into more than two hours. Ah… and don't forget the extra 15 minutes he spent after he arrived searching for a parking spot.

Contestant A takes the subway all the way from elSydah Zeinab to eldemerdash metro station and takes a healthy-looking microbus. The microbus driver is aware of all the traffic jams in hand, so he drives through elnasr road then skips from Eltayaran Street to the middle of abbas Elakkad Street to the middle of makram Abeid Street assuming that all the microbus' passangers agreed to take that route and covers the journey in less than 30 minutes. And hence, the total duration for contestant A is 45 minutes only.
The result: Contestant A wins with the 45 minutes only and arrives earlier than contestant B with 2:15 hours.

Contestant B planned his journey on his ego, his fast car and systematic planning but he forget that each journey has its own inputs to handle
If we could describe the method Contestant A took to reach his target destination we'd call it: flexible, fast, simple and both proactive to change and incremental (as after each stage he decided which way to go and how). And that's what exactly gather up to form the meaning of the word agile.

Agile thinking is all about open-minded productivity and smart performance.


From my point of view the agile methodologies mainly revolve about certain principles:

• Human development from inside out
Any agile project environment should Motivate the spirit of collaboration and team spirit all over the project members, everybody has his opinion and shares a slice of the responsibility cake.

• Focus on the target all through the project
Agile teams are goal driven; a project is divided into a set of intervals (sprints is commonly used) where a part of the project is delivered and accumulatively integrated.

• Best utilization of resources
The most important precondition for applying an agile methodology is involving only the people of the required skills to make sure that they can really deliver.

• Customer satisfaction and word of mouth marketing
A big satisfied smile is only drawn on a customer face only if he had a tangible result in his hands, that's why the measure of quality in any agile project is through working software. Good reputation comes from sharp deliveries.

• "Get it done or die trying"
Some people think that agile is the magic wand that can deliver any project with. From my personal experience, one of the biggest problems about agile here in Egypt is that people mix it with agility, because agility means rapid development but not necessarily sticking to any values. So a good advice is to make sure that you can do a thing before signing on it.

Special thanks to Passanta Ahmed for her support and information in making this article