Focus on Getting to the Goal as a Team over Focusing on “Doing Agile”

For those who are familiar with some of my other posts, I seem to follow a similar pattern when talking about Agile.  Based on using Agile as the tool to help implement the Rockefeller Habits when I was working at Q4, I’ve always thought that the focus and goal is always to help an organization be successful based on how that company defines success.

This was the focus for a session I proposed at Agile Coach Camp this weekend in Waterloo.  First off, I love Coach Camp!  The energy, openness and shared learning that happens is simply amazing.  It is truly inspiration for me to see how passionate everyone is about Agile and giving back to the community.

I had originally titled the session “Focus on Success over Focusing on ‘Being Agile'” and I was pleased with the open dialogue that came out and helped me sort out the thoughts in my mind around this topic.    I’ve mind-mapped and framed a mini-book based on a post I wrote last December that I feel very strongly can help bridge the gap or remove the disconnect between organizations that want to adopt Agile with the message being communicated from the Agile community.

While I am a firm believer in the Manifesto and the principles of Agile, I don’t think that message resonates as well with clients and organizations that want to adopt Agile as much as using Agile as a tool to reach a goal does.

The whitepaper I had hope to publish many months ago started evolving into this mini-book but not having written a book before I am struggling a little!  This is a great chance to eat my own dog-food and use Agile as the tool to accomplish my goal of writing this book.  Well, I think that is enough ramblings for now, you can view the summary of the session here!