The Vision of Agile; the Reality of Half Baked

I got nothing. I blog weekly and I got nothing. Three partial posts with great themes, a day of hooky, discussion versus decision and the feeling of joy when you find out, it’s not just you. So what? Nothing is ready for this week’s post. The last couple of weeks at work, I’ve maniacally researched, questioned and shown a new program is not ready for release. The implementation team discounted my findings.

“This development is agile and this release is a minimum viable product, like a cake with no icing. The icing comes later”

“Don't confuse not ready with agile. Your cake is not baked; you have nothing to serve."

I struggled with all the unusable content I wrote this week until I realized I had three bowls of cake batter (three drafts) and no cake (finished post.) My writing isn't agile, it's not ready. My ego is mad at me. We failed, we should make one of the three drafts work, but there isn’t enough time. My ego focused on expectations and plans.

How often do you say “not ready?” Does it mean not a team player, not trying hard enough, not going to keep a job with that attitude? When I declared my work “not ready,” something happened. Acknowledging “not ready” a new option appeared. As I wrote the first two lines confessing “not ready,” a new theme emerged. “Not ready” just means you’re not ready according to plan, it doesn’t mean there is not a solution. Throwing out what doesn’t work offers freedom of finding what does.