The problem isn’t the word ‘Agile’ and sorry Ron, the problem certainly is not that “people don’t do what we said”  What kind of elitist attitude is that?  The problem is the message coming out of the Agile community isn’t resonating with organizations that want to adopt Agile.  Organizations want to adopt Agile for a reason and most of the time we overlook that reason and jam a bunch of wishy-washy crap and a bunch of practices down their throat all the while wrapped in a message of “gee, you just don’t get it“.    While the Agile community has evolved and matured, “our customers”  largely have not.   The Agile community is full of fantastic forward-thinkers that have made huge strides in spreading Agile practices and I think the pace of that evolution has far exceeded our customers pace of understanding how to apply these concepts to their context.

I talked to a potential client today and asked him why they wanted to “go agile” and he said to do things faster and cheaper.  That’s his perception of the benefits of Agile and that’s ok.  I certainly don’t blame him for his opinion, instead I asked him questions to understand why he felt that way and what problems his organization is facing that led him to the conclusion that Agile was the way to go.   Most importantly I want to understand his situation and help him improve his organization.

When I first got into Agile, my first experience was with a company using Scrum.  A client came to me and said “we need you to build X, Y and Z“.  I thought this was a good opportunity to learn something new.  When I asked our “Scrum guy” how we can approach this project I was met with what I now know to be the usual rhetoric.  Write some stories, build some stuff, get some feedback and repeat until it’s done.

I had asked how we could come up with the time and cost for it so the client could get budget approval and was met with “uh, you just don’t get Agile….it doesn’t work that way“.   Now that’s just dumb.

Agile needs a context to be successful and oddly enough that context came at the same company.  My at-the-time boss had introduced us to the Rockefeller Habits and it immediately resonated with me.  Long story short, we used Scrum to implement the Rockefeller Habits.  The Rockefeller Habits helped set the business context and Agile was the ‘tool’ that got us there.  We used common sense and used the Rockefeller Habits as our guide, not Agile and the results were outstanding.  I recently talked to my former boss and he mentioned that’s just how they work now.  It’s not the Rockefeller Habits or Agile, it’s just how they work because it makes sense for their business and it’s getting results.

That’s what Agile is.  It’s taking data from your system and making smart decisions with that data based on your context.  We had no automated testing, hell, we had no QA people at the time and a bunch of bugs that WE tracked that NEVER generated helpdesk calls so what’s the point of implementing XP practices?  There’d be no value.

We were just a great mix of people with a shared goal, a FANTASTIC leader and we were willing to try shit out and learn.  That’s what it’s all about and not every organization can do that.  Some organizations need metrics or checklists or other ‘non-agile’ stuff and we certainly don’t need to tell them they are stupid for wanting that.  If that’s what their system can support, our message needs to change to adapt to their reality instead of beating them over the head with a bunch of hokey bullshit.

Demand for Agile is exceeding the capacity of those who really understand it so we’re left with people trying to make sure they are doing practice X right (as is evident by the billions of Linked In discussions I participate in).  It’s not their fault, all we can do as a community is adapt to serve our customers better.  That’s Agile.

Technically I’m on vacation and since I don’t really consider what I do a ‘job‘ (read: I love what I do), I’ve been catching up on email, forums and other conversations on Linked In.

Is the Agile community sending the wrong message?  Do people just not get it? Why does it seem there is this overwhelming need for something to give the gold stamp?  Are Agile values and principles at odds with fundamentally how the humans behave?

Dramatic?  Maybe.

From metrics to methodology, what seems to get lost is doing the right thing or doing what’s necessary for a project/product to succeed.  Reflecting back on previous lives of being “in charge“  I don’t know how many times I’ve either talked out of my, ahem… or flat out asked the team what they think we need to do in order to be successful.  It hasn’t always worked of course but I’ve worked with some great folks who could take the data presented to them and do what they felt was the right thing at the time.

Stakeholders, project sponsors and customers really don’t give a shit if you’re using XP or Scrum or Waterfall or Shabadoo Methodology (that one is mine, TM pending…), they want results.  Whether the goal is project success, more money or whatever, however you get there doesn’t matter.  Chances are the next situation will be different so doing the same thing again probably won’t work.

This has been a source of confusion and frustration for me a few times with clients, but I think there comes a time when you work for a boss or organization that seems to get it.  Sometimes you find a boss or leader who is very much a catalyst, somebody with that “it” factor.  Somebody that knows the direction of organization whether is be selling off the company so we all get rich or somebody who understands the market and is trying to blow a vertical wide open.   I feel lucky enough having experienced this rare phenomenon  twice and whatever the goal was in those situations, it was loud and clear.

Strong leadership and a purpose seem to drive how we get results, not a process or methodology.   So what’s the point? Am I just rambling on or what?  The point is, the manifesto was created for a reason.  Use it as a guide, not the rule.  Sometimes you need less rules and process, sometimes you need the reverse.  At the end of the day, people are complex.  Teams are complex.  Throw them into another system (read: the organization) and the waters get even muddier.

That’s why I love what I do.  Each situation is unique, each challenge is different and I really dig that.