Announcing asyncagile.org!

<tl;dr>

I’m working on a book idea. The topic is “asynchronous agile”. In the agile spirit of releasing early and often, I’m putting out my thoughts on this website.

https://www.asyncagile.org/

I’d love for you to take a look and spread the word on social media if possible. If you want to author a guest post, just get in touch.

</tl;dr>

Some weeks back I surveyed about 500 IT professionals asking them about their experiences with distributed work. While the survey threw up many insights, it was clear that even when people enjoy the quality of work they do, they wilt under the pressure of long hours. Everyone values work life balance and deep work, but meetings and interruptions come in the way.

I’ve been working in parallel to articulate a point of view about a more inclusive and remote-native way of working that embraces the agile philosophy of “sustainable pace”. I’m calling this “asynchronous agile”. What is asynchronous agile you may ask? The definition and philosophy are quite simple - simple enough that you may scoff at the next paragraph.

“It’s a set of reimagined agile collaboration and communication practices that don’t need people to be in the same space at the same time.?

By giving people the time to interact at a time and pace convenient to them, we promote thoughtful communication, flexibility, inclusion and we also create an environment conducive to deep work.”

Thankfully I don't have to be a trailblazer. I'm standing on the shoulders of giants, such as Gitlab, Automattic, Doist and Basecamp who've been pioneers in remote-native, distributed work. The key is to make these practices stick in large corporations and also for the 1.1 trillion dollar IT services industry.

To make this concrete, I’ve been working on the idea of a book. However, it would be rather un-agile to do a big bang release one fine day. So on advice from my colleagues Martin Fowler and Paulo Caroli, I’ve put together a website where I’ll write regularly about this topic.

https://www.asyncagile.org/

If at some point I can convert this writing into a book, that’ll be a great outcome. If not, at least the writing sees the light of day somewhere. The website will be in a state of perpetual beta, so please share your feedback, reactions and criticism online or with me directly. As you can see, I’m putting myself out there!?

I want to draw your attention to two ways you can consume the content on this site.?

1. Go through the posts chronologically. This may resemble reading a book. Start here if you want to read in sequence.?
2. I’ve also categorised the posts so you can dip your toe into topics that interest you. Here are some categories for you to explore - best practice, sensible defaults, facilitating change, meetings, skills.?

And yes, what you see today is a work in progress. I’ll continue to add more content in days to come. Please hold me accountable and if you want to see some content in particular or author a guest post, just let me know.?