Agile is Compound Interest on Continuous Improvements
Tanmay Das, (ICF-PCC, EMCC EIA SP, EMCC ITCA SP)
Helping Managers become Leaders, and Co-Workers become Teams | Leadership & Team Coaching | Executive Coaching | Enterprise Agile Coach
Agile is Compound Interest on Continuous Improvements.
Wow, this feels like, I have coined “What is Agile” in my own words.
“Agile is Compound Interest on Continuous Improvements, be it personal or professional ” ~ Tanmoy Das
We all have our own interpretation of Agile, and we try to define Agile in our own words.
Here is my humble attempt towards collective sensemaking expressed through my individual consciousness. So I could internalize it as my own realization.
“Agile is Compound Interest on Continuous Improvements, be it personal or professional ” ~ Tanmoy Das
What is Agile? seems to me as a Trillion $$$$$ question.
Agile is all about delivering Business value faster ...
How ? We can deliver business value faster by reducing Bureaucracy... it's that simple
Agility is no longer a Luxury or Good to have, most probably we need Agility in all aspects of our life if we wish to survive and thrive in post #COVID #VUCA world.
Earlier I used to refer to Complex Adaptive Systems(CAS) and VUCA world when I used to explain Agile. Yes, the VUCA world is a driver for Agility, but CAS or VUCA in itself is not Agile.
CAS or VUCA is just the conditions or the containers which encourage us to be AGILE.
Now let’s try to understand “What is Compound Interest” and “How to Apply Compound Interest on Continuous Improvements “.
Remember, compound interest can work against you too. If you have loans or credit card debt where you keep just paying the minimum, the interest you pay will compound. Paying off any expensive debts should be your first priority. And financial debt and Technical debt are similar in nature. If you have technical debt in your systems then it becomes very expensive to main those systems. And you will have a similar experience where compound interest is working against you.
“Understanding both the power of compound interest and the difficulty of getting it is the heart and soul of understanding a lot of things.” ~ Charlie Munger
More quotes on Compound Interest: https://quotessayings.net/topics/compound-interest/
AGILE is common sense, unfortunately, common sense is not common to all, interpretations vary according to individual's Liminal Thinking or the lenses through which they see the WORLD.
How we connect Compound Interest with Continuous Improvement?
The link is Compound Effect: A combination of Consistency, Persistence, and Patience.
The Compound Effect will show you why big, abrupt changes rarely work and how you can change your life over time with the power of small, daily steps, a routine that builds momentum and the courage to break through your limits when you reach them. Real and lasting success requires work—and lots of it; you make your choice, and then your choices make you.
In essence, Agility is common sense, even Mark Twain was an Agilist.
“Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection” ~ Mark Twain
Steve Jobs is definitely an Agilist as he is the Product Owner personified. He is not with us anymore, though his spirit lives and will inspire many Product Owners.
“I have great respect for incremental improvement, and I’ve done that sort of thing in my life, but I’ve always been attracted to the more revolutionary changes. I don’t know why. Because they’re harder. They’re much more stressful emotionally. And you usually go through a period where everybody tells you that you’ve completely failed” ~ Steve Jobs
“Give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others. Live in the faith that the whole world is on your side as long as you are true to the best that is in you” ~ Christian D Larson
“Without change, there is no innovation, creativity, or incentive for improvement. Those who initiate change will have a better opportunity to manage the change that is inevitable” ~William Pollard
“Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning” ~Benjamin Franklin
The Kaizen philosophy assumes that our way of life - be it our working life, our social life, or our home life - deserves to be constantly improved. ~ Masaaki Imai
Most of the time we refer to LEAN and Agile to bring improvements. Like Scrum, introduced the concept of creating Kaizen Stories during Retrospective. Kaizen is one of the core principles of LEAN practices.
I hope I am able to connect the dots between Compound Interest and Continuous Improvement. And by connecting the dots, I will quote my Hypothesis again, my Hypothesis is: “Agile is Compound Interest on Continuous Improvements, be it personal or professional ” ~ Tanmoy Das
I need help from the collective Agile Community Globally to validate my Hypothesis.
I would like to give credit to Dr. @Alistair Cockburn for his Heart of Agile Foundation class which enabled me to express Agile in very simple way.
The Heart of Agile is a radically simpler approach to achieve outstanding outcomes.
“Whatever your initiative, it involves changing the world just a little bit. The world, however, is remarkably resistant to interventions. The best ideas fail because of misunderstandings of how the world will react, or because of errors in implementation.” ~ Alistair Cockburn
I am very grateful to our fellow classmates who are contributing to collective learning.
This article is far from complete, it is more of a conversation starter.
Agile is Compound Interest on Continuous Improvements. And Continuous Improvements happen through frequent feedback loops. We need to go through the cycle of Collaborate, Deliver, Reflect, and Improve.
I am looking forward to our Agile Community to validate this Hypothesis and improve it continuously.
Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection. — Mark Twain
Founder - INNOVATION ROOTS? & AgileCommunity.org and Creator of #AgileNetworkIndia
3 年Thank you for sharing this message Tanmoy Das This article is very interesting, and I am looking forward for more amazing contents coming from you. Best wishes for your commitment towards learning and keep writting.
Executive Director & Managing Director
4 年Good one...Everything starts small and compounds itself progressively for those who adapt the new way of the Agile world - iteratively and adjusting to the new norm in today's world. Loved all the captions. We can easily use your caption and cite it :)
Heresiarch
4 年So Agile is capital, sort of like human capital. But then, if it's human, it's labour, not capital. Alas, there's no continuous improvement without labour. So labour, I mean Agile, is an input to a process of sustained improvement. Compound interest is output, an accretion, typical of capital, human capital here, so more Agile is accrued to Agile, resulting in more and more Agile, up to the point of one becoming so Agile as to crash the treadmill. Think I got it.
Innovation Consultant | Strategy, Agility, AI | SPCT
4 年One of those simple, obvious pearls of wisdom that make you wonder why no-one else has been speaking about it for years. Thank you for the nugget, Tanmoy - if you don’t mind, this has been promoted to the top of my current quotes list.
Passionate about Agility & Process Improvement, Project Management Practices & Quality Assurance and Job-oriented Education
4 年Tanmoy Das My Dear Friend Your article would require more often reading, even contextual reference to get full understanding and value from it just like compound interest or growth option MF and "continual improvement" is phenomenon outcome of which becomes progressively visible only when you remain intact on this journey. I believe Agility is intrinsic within all of us and we demonstrate it very well in our personal and social life, we only need to keep this (our) characteristics also in our professional life and keep that Agile WOW (way of working) alive while interacting with colleagues (across functions) to see the dividend (maintaining in growth option) in slowly travelling towards the desired goal (of organization and professional community at large)