How to Effectively Steal from Agile PART 1
Distilling the core of Agile-ness can help you achieve your goals.
The Digital Custodian R&D (Rip off & Duplicate) Department has been hard at work trying to find yet another way to steal from Agile. We’ve developed a process that leverages the core of Agile-ness, and we’re making this information open to the public for general consumption. We’re confident that integration of this core into your business framework can help you achieve your goals.
Since its inception twenty years ago, Agile software methodology has been applied to numerous facets of business from leadership, to testing and design. Big “A” Agile became such a buzz word that it’s been twisted away from its roots and many of us don’t really know what they are.
Those roots were planted in 2001 when a group of developers at a ski resort in Utah created their “Manifesto for Agile Software Development.” In it, they defined values and principles they deemed a better way to develop software. So if you follow the manifesto and the twelve principles, you get to call yourself “Agile.” Simple, right? But maybe that’s easier said than done.
How do we know we’re Agile? Can we measure our Agile-ness?
If we follow Scrum as closely as possible, are we Agile? Not really. Agile isn’t Scrum and Scrum isn’t very Agile.
We could quantify Agile-ness by using the manifesto values and principles as checkboxes. If we assign four points for the manifesto values and twelve points for the principles for a total of sixteen points, then divide our total points by sixteen. Bam! There’s our percentage of Agile-ness. Though helpful, this method exposes redundancies in the manifesto.
I’d like to suggest a distilled view of Agile that not only filters out redundancies, but is better suited for broad applications in business.
First, let’s review the manifesto. The first four are the values and 5 through 16 are the principles.
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage.
Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
Working software is the primary measure of progress.
Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is essential.
The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.
Seeking Combinations
We can extract commonalities by evaluating the values and principles. Let’s group them into 4 categories:
People - Who is the value/principle referring to?
Action - What actions are suggested for the people?
Process - In what way will these people follow these actions?
Cadence - How often should the people follow this action for full effectiveness?
These four categories capture the spirit of Agile in a concentrated form.
Photo by Mimi Thian on Unsplash
Distilled Agile Principle #1 - Communication:
How many times have you had a business problem that resulted from poor communication? Communication is a challenge in every business. Let’s face it: Humans can be pretty poor communicators. And it’s far too easy to send an email and even easier to ignore one. You know what’s hard to ignore? Someone looking at you, talking to you, asking you questions. Also, we know that people are far ruder and more detached from empathy when they aren’t face-to-face. Just look at any comments section on Twitter or YouTube. People can be down-right mean. But when they are face-to-face, not so much. So, there should be a best practice for communication. From the manifesto, let’s take numbers 1, 3, 8, and 10 and distill them down to a principle that is easily digestible.
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
These four are all about establishing values and standards of communication with the goal to be efficient and effective.
Let’s break it down by extracting the words into the four categories:
People: Individuals, Customer, Business people, developers, development team
Action: Interactions, collaboration, work together, conveying information, conversation
Process: Face-to-face, most efficient effective method
Cadence: daily, throughout the project
People
There are several people referred to in these items and our goal is to remove redundancy and consolidate. We’re looking for a principle for all to follow so let’s replace “Individuals, Customer, Business people, developers, development team” with “Everyone.”
Action
Next, Let’s remove redundant words and ideas and pick the best word. Let’s remove “work together” in favor of “collaboration” and “interactions, conveying information, conversation” are replaced with “communication.”
Process
While I believe that “face-to-face” is indeed the best communication method, given our global post-Covid world, it is not always possible. I’m going genericize a bit and go with “as directly as possible.”
Cadence
As Agile is business methodology on how to handle projects, I feel like “throughout the project” is a given and therefore redundant. Bye-bye.
That leaves us with:
People: everyone
Action: collaboration and communication
Process: as directly as possible
Cadence: daily
Our first Agile Principle is distilled into:
Efficiency and effectiveness are achieved when everyone communicates and collaborates as directly as possible, daily.
I work with teams to help them achieve higher levels of performance. Communication is one of the most important areas of focus when guiding a team. I preach active, direct conversations. In person face-to-face is best, but even video chat allows you to see the person’s face which helps convey non-verbal cues. You may think that daily verbal communication takes more time, but email and chat tools are easy to ignore which leads to waiting, and waiting is wasting. Practice active direct communication daily, and your team will become more efficient and effective.
This is part one of a five part series. I hope you have enjoyed reading it.
Stay tuned next week for the next installment of Distilling Agile.
