Who are the real Agile Influencers?

Agile is now a huge movement, industry or whatever you like to categorise it as.

How big? Well, it’s difficult to get exact figures, but we do have some strong indicators.

• According to the annual State of Agile report, 97 per cent of organisations are now practising agile development methods.
• There are over 418,000 Professional Scrum Certified from Scrum.org.
• The Scrum Alliance has issued over 1 million Scrum certifications.
• Scaled Agile has certified over 600,000 people in SAFe.

So it’s a fair guess that there are tens of millions of people worldwide trying, using, doing or being Agile.

As in many groups, there are many different voices and opinions in the Agile world. But some tend to carry more weight than others. We may not like it, but that’s the way it is.

Who is influencing Agile?

From our research, we’ve compiled this list of the people we believe carry the most influence in the world of Agile, and those who hold the most influence over the future directions of Agility.

Putting together a list like this is fraught with peril. The likelihood that we overlooked someone is high. And there are always going to be some people who don’t agree with who made the cut, and who didn’t. Like the old adage says, "You can’t please all the people, all the time".

However, we still believe that this list is valuable as an indicator of who is steering the ship. And please let us know if you want to nominate someone who you think we missed.