What is agile anyways?

What is “Agile”.  Well, for one, it’s not a noun, and it’s definitely not a proper noun.  So what does it mean to be agile and why do we care when we have methodologies like Scrum, XP, and Kanban to light the way?

The more I learned about various agile methodologies the more I struggled with this question.  I started life as a scrum believer and eventual master, certified and everything which is really not much of an achievement.  Scrum was the answer to my questions and the pure definition of agile.  Slightly later in my career I was exposed to a Kanban methodology that did away with some of the core tenets of Scrum and after a bitter battle my belief in Scrum had to bend because the Kanban methodology worked really well!  There was more than one way to be agile.. If there were two ways to be agile what other ways existed?  The short answer, a lot.  I read a lot of books, tried a lot of things (and made a lot of mistakes), watched YouTube videos, and I started to have a really hard time defining what it meant to be agile because there were so many ways to be agile…

I came to a realization that agility is not a complex methodology or framework, but really just a simple set of rules.

1. Decide where you want to go.
2. Take a small step towards your goal.
3. Adjust based on what you learned.
4. Repeat

If you follow the steps above I would contend that you are working in an agile way.  The advanced course consists of one addition.

• When choosing between options of comparative or equal value choose the one that makes future change easier.

That’s it.  That’s all it takes to be agile.  No certifications, no consultants, just a few simple steps.  

Why do we care?

Most importantly, agile and resilient companies survive and sometimes even thrive.  If you aren’t agile and resilient then eventually you go the way of the dinosaurs when a competitor which is agile and resilient comes along.  Just using an agile methodology, however, isn’t enough!

Scrum, for example, tells us exactly what to do and when.  It feels great because change is scary!  I get it, when you jump out of a plane you don’t care about the aerodynamics of the parachute, you just want to know what to pull and when.  Scrum does that and in the process makes it easy for us to stop thinking and just follow the rules.  The problem is, when we stop thinking, or avoid options because they are not Scrum, we stop working in an agile way.

This is important because to adopt a methodology that works for us we must build it not buy it.  

The most successful methodologies were born out of necessity and through the 4 steps outlined above.  Take the Spotify methodology which seems to be making the rounds more and more these days.  Spotify started as a Scrum shop and is now credited with building a great scaled agile methodology, but they did not build a methodology, they evolved one over the course of years that worked for them, with their culture, for their product.  To take the Spotify methodology and to try and adopt in in a strongly bureaucratic company or regulated industry is not a recipe for success.  

What do we do?

As consultants we need to seek understanding first and advise second.  Our focus needs to move away from certification and towards expanding our breadth of knowledge rather than depth within a single methodology.  We need to accept that we are not the experts in our client’s company, our clients are, and It’s our job to guide them to a solution that works for them and in which they feel ownership, can maintain and grow, and which can be encoded into their culture.