Doing vs. Being Agile

Many teams believe they are Agile because they are following the prescribed Agile practices. E.g. A team may think they are Agile because they are doing daily stand up meetings, sprint planning meetings, retrospectives etc.

The mistake that teams often make is that they tend to treat these practices as ‘ceremonies’, thereby focusing more on getting the ‘ceremony’ done, and not so much on doing it right so as to derive the benefit that the practice is intended to provide. Take, for instance, daily stand up meetings. A team can be said to ‘be’ Agile if they can achieve the following benefits through these meetings:

  • Instilling a clear sense of purpose about what needs to get done
  • Focus on efficiently moving the work forward
  • Early identification of risks and blockers
  • Team members helping each other with share obstacles

However, many teams think they are Agile, just because they are ‘doing; stand up meetings, even when their stand up meetings are not delivering any of these benefits, or worse, have anti patterns.

Doing Agile practices does not translate into being Agile, unless there is focused effort put in by all team members to derive the intended benefits from that practice. Teams need to be conscious about why they are doing a practice and should aim to keep improving the maturity level of that practice.

To state in other words, treating Agile as a noun is futile. Teams are Agile only when they understand that Agile is an adjective and constantly work towards it and also adopt the Agile mindset. The mindset change is required to make the transition from just ‘doing’ Agile to ‘being’ Agile.

Cross posted from my blog: https://suniltalksagile.wordpress.com/2012/06/

Rishi Sohaney

Executing Lean-Agile to accelerate digital products

9 年

good one, how a Scrum Master behave when half of time is"doing agile" and half is "being Agile". How a Scrum Master have to bring "doing Agile" member to "bring Agile"

回复
sunai sukanake

Asst. Manager - Solution Delivery at dtac

10 年

Today, We have medium size Agile event in Thailand (Agile66 group). We have the question about "What are the indicator to ensure team on the right track in Agile way?" What do you think? Is the answer similar with your summary?

回复
Nayan Ambali

Driving Universal Financial Inclusion | Fintech Solutions for Global Access & Equity

10 年

Sunil Mundra it is great article. It reminds me of "Be the change you wish to see", agile can't be run by ring master, I feel agile a lifestyle and not just folllwing agile prescription.

回复

Very well said Sunil...

回复

要查看或添加评论,请登录

Sunil Mundra的更多文章

  • The power of a small gesture

    The power of a small gesture

    Today I got the opportunity to give a talk to the students doing their Master’s degree at my Alma Mater, viz. School of…

    9 条评论
  • Distributed Development Enablers Part 2: Process

    Distributed Development Enablers Part 2: Process

    In this series of articles on Distributed Development, this is the third article. The first article was about…

  • Distributed Development Enablers Part 1: People

    Distributed Development Enablers Part 1: People

    Having examined the Challenges of Distributed Development (https://www.linkedin.

    6 条评论
  • Challenges Faced in Distributed Development

    Challenges Faced in Distributed Development

    By definition, Distributed Development is difficult due to the ‘tyranny of distance’. In fact, in the early days of…

    14 条评论
  • From ‘Taylorism’ to ‘Druckerism’

    From ‘Taylorism’ to ‘Druckerism’

    It is an undisputed fact that Frederick Taylor’s work, ‘Principles of Scientific Management’ was path breaking and that…

    22 条评论
  • The Implicit Agile Principles

    The Implicit Agile Principles

    The essence of Agile is supposed to be brought out by the Manifesto and 12 principles. However, there are few…

    13 条评论
  • Be Like Salt

    Be Like Salt

    What does salt have to do with consulting? Please read my blog, published by ThoughtWorks, to find out. https://www.

    11 条评论
  • Where is code created?

    Where is code created?

    Are you surprised by this question? You are thinking the answer is so obvious, isn’t it? Of course, the code is created…

    14 条评论
  • Maximizing Benefits from Agile Adoption/Transformation

    Maximizing Benefits from Agile Adoption/Transformation

    Given that being Agile has a direct correlation with business benefits, viz. Time to Market, Efficiency, Quality and…

    19 条评论