Agility and Humility
Tim ? ? Dickey
Product Development & Business Agility Coach | Teaching kittens how to be cats in product development
The Agile community is, like any social system, composed of people with diverse backgrounds, experiences and viewpoints. What I find interesting about the community is how strongly we embrace certain frameworks, mindsets, processes and tools. This is almost to the exclusion of other camps within the Agile ecosystem.
In his keynote speech at AgileCamp Dallas, Dave Snowden touched on the “this versus that” feuds we sometimes see within the community. These conflicts cause people outside the Agile community to look at us to wonder if Agile practices are worth the effort because of a degree of infighting.
While talking with a friend prior to AgileCamp, we touched on this subject as it was causing friction in the workplace between team members. In this case, it was SAFe versus Scrum and intended to highlight deficiency and knowledge gaps between people and frameworks. In my assessment, the events my friend was describing were counter intuitive and potentially damaging to both sides.
In trying to help my friend, I suggested asking questions with genuine curiosity and humility to learn more about specific difference between SAFe and Scrum. I suggested asking about how the roles, like Release Train Engineer (RTE) and Nexus Scrum Master, are similar and/or different. I often find myself saying when I don’t agree with someone on a subject or topic, “This is not right, this is not wrong, this is different.”
This brings me to the article title; agility and humility. If I’m exhibiting values like openness and respect, then I don’t have time for arguing a certain framework, mindset, process or tool is better than another. In fact, if I’m approaching my colleagues with humility, I should be willing to listen, learn and adopt a framework, mindset, process or tool if it creates value. For me, I have demonstrated agility when I do what I mentioned above.
As I learned doing projects in my garage, not every framework, mindset, process or tool is useful in every situation. Understanding situation context and using the right approach will achieve more than holding fast to a “hammer” tactic to every project. When a hammer is the only tool I have, I see every project as a nail.
#Agile #Scrum #SAFe #XP #Kanban #Lean #Flow
IT Consultant
5 年2 things (in short) : 1 - when there is a lot of money to be made. There are some who know more than most. There are some others that also know more but disagree. Then there is an imperative to be seen as the one who is right. So, quite honestly, I'm not surprised. 2 - what agile is and is not is not really as interesting as what works. Which things cause hyper productivity? Which things cause employee happiness? Which things cause very high customer satisfaction? While probably all agile approaches have something to say about this, as a scientist, I can say that few have well documented, repeated scientific studies. Case studies a plenty, but the reality is that we have trouble cleanly measuring results and therefore have difficulty identifying things that really work from things that sound nice or related. If we focused on things that really work and tried to figure out the truth about what does and what does not work, we can improve the lives of people everywhere. We can be delivering better services, better products and save more lives. But until we make that a priority, and dump seemless infinite amounts of money into this agile thing (without demanding actual results) , this phenomenon is bound to happen.
Associate Director Product Management - PaaS at SiriusXM Connected Vehicle Services
5 年Tim, I really appreciate your words on this approach. I don’t feel that I am rigid to any one methodology but I have found myself putting up barriers to better understanding some of them. So more humility would be a good thing - in this and other ideas.
Application Manager at Bank of America
5 年In a way the whole framework turf war is a bit silly. Its like one person saying my Shaolin Kungfu is better than your Kyokushin Karate. It is total conjecture unless we are able as true practioners to wage battle in a Ring or Octagon to test our skills. In the end who performs better may have less to do with the framework than to the skill and discipline of the fighter. Likely there are strengths and weeknesses with each discpline and also much that is universal and shared. Much of the conflict between these frameworks is most likely about money and control of who owns the knowledge and controls the certifications. Like Bruce Lee said, “Research your own experience. Absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, add what is essentially your own.”
Ik coach teams en organisaties in hun verandering, met Hoofd, Hart en Humor * Gastheer @alleskanban podcast * Founder@KanbanEase
5 年Agile for me starts with an open mindset, being curious, and that sometimes requires a somewhat provocative approach. But foremost I am aware that there is no fixed "solution" in being Agile. Agility for me means the ability to use the best practices, principles and frameworks that contribute to the organisational or team goals and the courage to also let them go if circumstances change.