Agile Crosses the Chasm

In his book Crossing the Chasm,^[22] Geoffrey A. Moore writes about the Technology Adoption Life Cycles for new products. He describes five distinct groups of adopters for any innovative new product:

• Innovators are the first to adopt new technologies.
• Inspired by the success of innovators, early adopters are next to adopt new technologies.
• Once a lot of the kinks are worked out and it’s easier to use, the early majority gets involved.
• With the help of the early majority it becomes mainstream and the late majority gets involved.
• Finally, the laggards are forced to get involved once the other alternatives are no longer available.

We can see the Technology Adoption Life Cycle play out as each new and innovative product is introduced, but this same adoption life cycle plays out when any innovation is introduced. Moore describes the midpoint, as an innovation makes its way through the early adopters into the early majority, as “crossing the chasm.”

Agile has hit the early adopters and is penetrating the early majority. It’s crossing the chasm. But even fifteen years on or so, it hasn’t fully crossed the chasm, and even when you cross the chasm there are still challenges ahead.

But there are aspects of Agile, like the technical practices of Extreme Programming, that are still in the innovators stage. It’s not unusual for discontinuous innovation to be adopted discontinuously. Adoption usually happens along a path adopters feel is safest. This is why some of the easier and more familiar—but less valuable—practices tend to get adopted first. And as we’ll see in the next chapter, Agile won’t be “the norm” until we really understand the principles behind the practices.