How to be Agile and not fragile

Almost every man (and woman) I meet, worship all things agile. To which, I often find myself wondering, “Has the world mastered the A word already?

"In the beginning, the software Universe was created. This had made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the galaxy)"

Things remained more or less the same for the next five decades until 17 Rebellions met in Snowbird, Utah and published the first Agile Manifesto.

Many before them had seen this coming but no one had predicted that in the contemporary world, it would become as popular as a cat video on YouTube. Those who see it can’t refrain from sharing it and those who don’t are too embarrassed to admit it.

Popularity begets followers begets stubborn beliefs. Tenacious beliefs and blocked teams are the cats that kill the curiosity, which Agile steadfastly demands.

So, here comes the oath.

Making Agile Work (Oath)

We accept that the status quo is no longer valid: Before embarking on the journey of Agile + Scrum + ceremonies. Stakeholders, product owners, executives need to welcome the incoming change. Barriers need to be broken down, Undifferentiated tasks have to be identified, revamped. Techniques like Accelerate, 8-steps-process should be incorporated earlier on (more info)

We believe in fitness functions: After agreeing on the invalidity of the status quo. leaders or captains need to sit together and lay down the blueprint of the new journey.

for example, consider a media house that decided to go digital and agile overnight. Before kickstarting the agile engine, the Media house needs to decide on the MRP (releasable products for internal/beta users), MVP (live product), criteria of success, the benchmark of each team and final selection of 2 pizza teams (that are small but not homogenous, there are no dev teams, product teams or QA teams in Agile organization).

All these questions/discussions are nothing but fitness functions (more info) that churn out self-evaluating goals for the organizations and teams. Without them, the litmus paper is always blue, and the success of initiatives is half measured.

We shall Let go of fragility: At the end of the day the success of every initiative, every project, every program depends on the foot soldiers. They are the people that are going to roll up their sleeves and get tasks done. As such they require complete attention and all help in getting the work done. Some of them are

• One vision, one organization A project is doomed from the start if the foot soldiers are clueless of the CEO vision. When JFK visited NASA for the first time in 1961 and asked a janitor, what he was doing. Janitor earnestly replied that he was helping to put a man on the moon. Indeed 8 years later, the man landed on the moon for the first time. That's the power of unified vision
• Kill the Silos:  Effective teams are devoid of Silos, every information is shared and the ownership is always collective. It’s never me vs you or us vs them in a team. Success belongs to everyone and so does failure.
• Refrain from having long bridges: QAs, Engineers, DevOps should sit on the same table or at least on the same floor. Designers should have an early look at the Engineers' screen(desk checks). Use modern channels for communications (slack, hangouts, chanty, fuze, etc) and tracking (JIRA, Trello, monday.com).
• Psychological Safety: Teams should be allowed to experiment with new things and newer tools. Failing few times paves way for future success. Learn from Google (more info). Studies have proven that employees that feel safe are more productive than the weary employees that happen to be in a constant political battleground.
• Build expertise in teams by providing training, build trust by acknowledging efforts instead of results. A happy employee is far more effective than a highly paid employee who is sad. Money can’t buy everything!
• Keep an eye on waste, debt: Everything in this world comes with debt. Agile dictates taking time out to clear debts (tech or functional) and get the house in order. Every strenuous activity needs to be followed by a period of recovery. In Agile this recovery goes hand-in-hand with BAU activities. Just like the Industrial production requires timeouts for mechanic repairs and oiling, similarly, Agile requires time for chucking out waste, enhancing ongoing processes, improving quality, etc.

 We will believe in Scrum ceremonies and their importance: All four ceremonies (sprint planning, daily scrum, sprint showcase, retrospectives) of Scrum are equally important. Agile is founded on sound strategies

Without a goal and sprint plan(sprint planning), the teams are rudderless ships; without daily scrum, a team doesn’t know how far it has come; without showcase, stakeholders are anxious and clueless; without retrospectives, there is no actionable knowledge on flaws and failures faced in the sprint.

Consider a project like a sports tournament, at the end of every match team, fans, sponsors and everybody else needs to know where they stand on the charts.

We shall deem Agile to be iterative: Consider Agile, a relation between two sets i.e. Set A {Business Values} and Set B{Sprints} where each business value maps to the output of a sprint and each sprint has business values. In other words, Agile methodology can be written as a function

 F(n) =F(n-1) + Business values  {n is the nth sprint).

We will rely on Modern Tools, and not shy away from riding on the shoulders of giants: The Success of Agile also depends on the tools the teams use. Along with the modern mindset, the Agile world also needs modern tools. No-one can travel around the world in bullocks, one needs planes to cross oceans, bullet trains to traverse cities and cars for last-mile connectivity. Similarly, teams should constantly apprise themselves of the latest trends, shifts in the technologies, newer products, etc. 

We will Constantly re-visit our Social contract:  As easier, it is to kick start a new initiative it’s as difficult to sustain it for a long time. Hence, it is imperative that Social contracts of teams are re-visited again and again. They define thresholds and checks, have onboarding kits, lay down expectations of various moving parts and broader strategies for the future.