Voyage in the Agile Memeplex - How to describe a vague term

Week 9’s topic is about agile programming and extreme programming. Normally, when reading about something, the first question to considered is “what” question. What is “agile” or “agility”? What is “extreme programming”? These questions are fair, and hopefully, if there is an obvious answer, reading the paper will become easier. However, it does not happen in every case.

 

Take “agile” word as an example. Cambridge dictionary define the word as “to be able to move your body quickly”. Searching for “agility” yield no result. What are you supposed to do in this case? In my experience, whenever I encounter such words, I know that I’m reading a jargon used in specific expertise. There are two ways to understand the word: Search the web for related words or phrases, or continue reading the paper. The author may define it in the paper.

That’s how I read about topic “agility”. (Kruchten 2007) says that “My first claim is that agility is not a technology, science, or product but a culture”, and since “culture” is a vague definition, it’s hard or nearly impossible to find a concrete term to describe “agility”. That’s why the author likens “agility” and its related terms to various terms. In behavior perspective, agility is like culture, in term of being an influencing factor in people’s behavior, and of affecting how people interpret other people’s behavior. In replication perspective, on the other hand, agility is like memeplex – a group of gene-like chunk of culture called meme. 

The purpose of the author is clear. Since the term is vague, if he describes it without any comparison or juxtaposition, hardly will this knowledge remain in readers.  By comparing different perspective of “agility”, readers better understand and remember the word. The author continues to define other terms such as “decontextualization”, “agilese”, “agilitis”, “agilology”. After reading the whole paper, now that I grasp the main message that the author tried to say:

• -       Decontextualization: In agile world, terms and conclusions and propositions are often mentioned in their own context. However, when re-quoting, they are used in different context, of little or much similarity with the former context.
• -       Agilese: The used of jargons become wide spread since using such words making people feel more involved to the agile world
• -       Agilism: The gather/meeting of like-minded people in agile world, the spread of the use of jargons in agilese world will create a culture. This process is called agilism.
• -       Agilitis: In my own opinion, agilitis is like an artist in agile world, and he possess features which are easy to recognize
• -       Agilology: The study/science of agility; how to perceive about agile world.

All of this leads to the conclusion create a whole picture of the paper: That’s the picture of agile world, with actions, with changes, with spread and creation of terms and worlds and culture.. Watching this picture help us to better understand agile world. And the main message that the author used to end his paper? It’s contained in one word: Context. And he stressed it. Because all actions in agile world depend on context, decontextualize any thing in this world needs careful observations: Can we quote this in this context? Is it still true in this context?

REFERENCE

Kruchten, P. (2007) 'Voyage in the Agile Memeplex', Queue, 5(5), 1.