From Postwar to the Next Sprint: The History of Agile Methodologies

In the first article of this series, I left the door open to tell the story of Agile methodologies.
When we hear “Agile,” we often think of whiteboards covered in post-its, daily stand- ups, and continuous releases, in teams embedded in IT environments. However, its DNA was forged much, much earlier, in a setting that may come as a surprise to many readers: the Japanese automotive industry of 1945, devastated in the aftermath of World War II.

Imagine running a factory where:

1. Basic supplies are a luxury. Every screw counts.
2. The local market is small and ever-changing. Mass production is unfeasible.
3. The cost of mistakes is extremely high. A single defect can destroy slim profit margins.
4. The U.S. introduces statistical quality control (Deming and his PDCA), establishing new standards during the Allied occupation.
5. The only survival strategy is to improve every single day.

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Toyota, a factory that had been a strategic Allied target for manufacturing war machinery engines, needed to create a production system that was flexible, adaptable, low-cost, yet highly reliable. It was in this context of scarcity, pressure for quality, and new standards that Taiichi Ohno and Eiji Toyoda turned continuous improvement and respect for people into foundational pillars of Toyota’s way of working.

In 1950, Eiji Toyoda visited Ford’s massive plant in Detroit. He was impressed, but he identified an Achilles’ heel: giant inventories and costly rework. Just days later, in a simple supermarket, he noticed shelves being restocked only when customers emptied them. That “pull” logic—demand pulling production—inspired what would become the Toyota Production System (TPS), the foundation of what we now call Lean.

By the late 1970s, Toyota’s TPS was producing with such efficiency that it embarrassed Ford’s mass production model. The West recognizes this success and adopted the methodology under the name Lean Manufacturing, exporting five core principles still recognizable on any modern sprint board:

Value first: The customer decides what is worth paying for.
Respect for the expert: The operator, technician, or developer is the process expert and should play a central role in its optimization and improvement.
Continuous improvement: Leaders work side by side with operators to observe, support, and optimize.
Systemic thinking: The production process is transversal and operates as a flow, not as an isolated unit.
Servant leadership: Managers remove obstacles for the team.

This methodology and its pillars were adopted not only by the automotive industry but by all kinds of manufacturing. In 1986, Takeuchi & Nonaka (yes, the same ones who defined the SECI knowledge management model I mentioned in my previous article) described the Lean Manufacturing principles in The New New Product Development Game, stating: “…a holistic or rugby"approach—where the team tries to go the distance as a single unit, passing the ball back and forth—may better meet today’s competitive demands.”

This metaphor would later be transformed by Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber into Scrum Scrum (1990–1995), the first explicitly Agile framework.

However, it wasn't until 2001 that 17 software professionals signed the Manifiesto Ágil Manifesto, formally and officially adopting “Lean philosophy” into IT as a standard framework. Thus was born the “Agile”umbrella, which today includes iteration-based project management, Scrum, XP, Crystal, Kanban, DevOps, and other implementations—forever influencing technology solution development and IT service management.

But to stay connected to its roots, in 2015 the Lean Manufacturing Lean Manufacturing model was adapted for software factories and technology-based services: Lean ITThis framework and its focus on resource optimization complement others like ITIL, COBIT, ISO/IEC, etc., empowering those who, rather than locking into one framework, are capable of embracing the strengths of each.
Today, Agile has transcended the IT domain, becoming a cross-functional work culture, integrated into areas like HR, communications, and sales.
So next time you build your backlog, remember: it’s the result of human ingenuity rising to meet adversity.

Ready for the next sprint?