What is Agile?
Many people believe that Agile is a methodology for project management. But the idea that there are specific practices and processes you can follow to guarantee success is a common and unfortunate misconception.
Although there are methods, frameworks and practices you can experiment with to promote agility, in reality, there are no specific processes you can follow to ‘be agile’.
It’s more helpful to think of agility as a mindset or a set of principles that empower you to improve the way you work. If you and the people you work with understand the theories that underpin so-called agile practices, you’re on the path to figuring out your own better ways of working.
what does it mean to ‘be agile’?
That’s a very big question with many possible answers. Here’s a very simple interpretation:
Put people at the heart of the thing you are building, because that’s who you’re building it for.
Don’t design a final product and plan to build it all at once. Instead, understand the problem that needs to be solved, then build small experiments that help you to work step-by-step towards a solution. Test each experiment in the real world to see if you’re headed in the right direction.
Build what you think is the most valuable stuff first (then find out if it was valuable by testing it in the real world).
Be flexible and ready to respond to change. In practical terms, this means allowing at least one of your constraints - scope, cost or time - to be negotiable. But don’t compromise on quality because you’ll end up regretting it.
Work collaboratively. That means talking to and listening to your colleagues as well as the people you’re building the thing for.
Make sure your team has the environment, resources, skills and motivation needed to get the job done.
Regularly take a step back to think about how you and your colleagues are working together, and discuss how you might be able to improve.
Sounds simple, right? Theoretically, it is! But in practice, it can be difficult, especially if you’re working in a traditional organisation where success is defined by output rather than outcomes. That’s why there are so many consultancies and organisations who claim that their particular method is the silver bullet, because it’s easy to follow a predefined process and hope that it works.
But blindly following processes doesn’t create agility.
Whatever process you do follow to get started on your path to agility, ensure that you are always mindful of the core principles outlined above, or as described in the Agile Manifesto. It’s like learning to play a musical instrument - you could learn to read sheet music and muddle your way through songs that other people have written, or you could learn music theory and have way more fun creating great music in your own style.
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