Being Agile Vs Following Agile

I see some of the interesting discussion about agile especially by so called agile guardian and few examples are listed below:-

• How to estimate project in agile way?
• How to do resource planning in agile?
• We are following agile project management but facing so and so problem and how to deal with those?
• Why agile fails?
• What kind of project are more suitable for agile?

So you are following agile but you are not agile that’s why you have these questions? Are you aware about agility or just heard about agile? You really think that you can follow agile or you are trying to micro-manage your project? How much you know about project management or your company/customer ask you to be agile to deliver a piece of work in agile way?

First thing first

You can’t follow agile for sure then what you can do? Be agile if you’re looking for agility. Agile is philosophy that built around people. Do you call people as resource or headcount? then please change your language. People is not equal to resource.

Any process that is based on inspect and adapt by people is agile. Focus should be on meeting customer expectation not just following process. What is the use of process if that is not delivering business values?

Agile is natural way of developing product so not hard to learn it but may be difficult to practice it especially when you think everyone should be agile except you.

My experience

I joined my 1st company in 1997 at that time there was nobody in my company who knew about software and matter of fact that I bought 1st computer for my company and started writing software for financial accounting system. I knew nothing about accounts but was open to learn and automate it. Being an individual developer, tester and analyst I was supposed to learn, build and test a system that completely new to me. I was successful because I was open to collaborate with business people to learn, build and demonstrate my work as frequently as possible. That helped me to learnt financial accounting system and solved business problem. This is agile.  

Take away

Be agile because you can’t follow agile. Open to understand business and then think about product. Product is not only about www.ecoomrce.com but also about what services your product is delivering. System thinking is not a fancy line but required to build a product that can solve business problem.