I thought I might take a stab at writing about what Agile really is, or in other words: what agile means to me.
A quick search of the word “agile” reveals a few definitions:
ag·ileˈajəl/adjectiveadjective: agile• able to move quickly and easily • able to think and understand quickly • having a quick resourceful and adaptable character •
So, agile is indeed an adjective, it is something you are (it is a characteristic), not something you do (my post on Being Agile goes into more detail). The word agile is also oriented either toward a physical or mental sense. The idea of movement or action either in a physical space or mental space, in a quick and adaptable manner.
Perhaps the best explanation of agile that I have seen comes from Craig Larman and Bas Vodde in their book Scaling Lean & Agile Development: Thinking & Organizational Tools for Large-Scale Scrum
“‘Agile’ is not a practice. It is a quality of the organization and its people to be adaptive, responsive, continually learning and evolving — to be agile. … Agile does not mean delivering faster. Agile does not mean fewer defects or higher quality. Agile does not mean higher productivity. Agile means agile — the ability to move with quick easy grace, to be nimble and adaptable. To embrace change and become masters of change — to compete through adaptability by being able to change faster and cheaper than your competition can.”
“Perhaps faster delivery and higher quality will be achieved with an agile method such as Scrum, but it is vital for business and engineering leaders to appreciate that the raison d’être of agile methods is … agility.”
That last line is important — the raison d’être for business and technology is agility. Businesses, particularly those in in any sort of technology field, will not survive in this digital era, nor indeed as we enter the fourth industrial revolution of the cyber-human interface without the ability to sense and respond to change quickly.
So now let’s explore some agile principles and the values. Certainly the Agile Manifesto and it’s supporting 12 Principles provide a great start.
This graphic shows the interplay between the four agile values and other values that undergird the essence of agility.
There are three salient ideas to pull from this that help explain how to succeed with Agile and how any team or organization can have agility and truly be agile.
Real Teams — build real teams and make them great! To succeed with Agile, we need small, cross-functional, teams (not just a group of people working together) aligned to common purpose. They must be empowered to be self-organizing (autonomy). In this way they can quickly shift resources as needed. They should also be co-located for optimum communication, transparency, trust, and openness. They must have the ability to pursue skill enrichment and enlargement, and become experts at their craft (mastery). Finally, they must be provided a clear vision and direction to pursue by the business and their customers (purpose).
Iterative & Incremental Work — don’t try to get it all right from the beginning and don’t build it all at once! To succeed with Agile, we need to strive for early delivery of business value. The key idea is to prioritize the highest business value work first, and then deliver. In this way Agile breaks work down into manageable chunks — design, build, test, demo, repeat. We “eat elephant one bite at a time” and have frequent demonstrations of progress to the team and to customers. In this way, Agile helps us sense and respond to change and adapt quickly. Agile does not help us deliver faster, it helps us get earlier to get feedback.
Frequent Feedback — embrace relentless reflection and continuous improvement! Finally, to succeed with Agile, we strive for reflection of our people, product, and process and become a learning organization. With more frequent delivery each iteration in the form of increments (may be potentially shippable) we get frequent feedback and communication, which improves subsequent iterations. In this way we are less likely to deviate from the desired outcome. Remember, the process is not nearly as important as the process for improving the process.
Until the Next Iteration . . .
Jason