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Is Agile Obvious?
From time-to-time people say to me:
“Agile is obvious”
When I’m being honest it is kind of hard to argue with them, it is certainly “obvious” to me. But at the same time agile is not obvious, or rather, the opposite of agile is also obvious. For example,
Agile says: obviously, you don’t know the future so don’t plan and research too far into the future.
Non-agile thinking says: obviously, failure to plan is planning to fail, obviously you need a plan of action, you need to plan for the future.Agile says: obviously, people work best when they are self-motivated and given a say in what they do.
Non-agile says: obviously, people are lazy and will do as little as possible, therefore someone needs to manage them.Agile says: high quality makes it easier to change in the future, obviously.
Non-agile says: obviously, quality is an endless quest, there is no point in polishing something which isn’t important, 20% of the effort gives 80% of the reward so don’t do any more.Agile emphasises the here and now, the soon, obviously requirements can be handled just-in-time, so live for today.
Non-agile says: if we don’t think about the future we will obviously duplicate work and incur additional costs.
And my own entry: obviously, software development as diseconomies of scale therefore optimise for lots of small. The opposite is equally obvious: economies of scale are what makes modern business – and the cloud – successful so exploit them
There are a number of obvious examples that go with that:
Agile says: obviously we should test every change and new feature by itself to avoid the complications of interacting changes.
Non-agile says: obviously full test runs are slow and expensive so bundle work together and test it on mass.
Both agile and not-agile are obvious. What you consider obvious depends on your starting point. Once you start thinking “agile” a lot of things become obvious. But if you are not thinking agile then, if you are thinking some other model, then the opposite is also obvious.
Some would term this “An Agile Mindset”. However I don’t want to do that, I find the idea of “an agile mindset” too nebulous. I also note that most of the people I hear talking about “an agile mindset” seem to clinging on to some piece of holy lore which I consider not very agile and they believe is totally agile (the project model and upfront requirements usually.)
Instead I find myself going back to Theory-X and Theory-Y. In general people fall into one camp or the other. If you, your philosophy on work and life, align with theory-Y then all the “agile is obvious” statements above are indeed obvious. Conversely, if you generally follow a theory-X philosophy then all the non-agile statements are obvious.
Perhaps surprisingly I find people can flip, and be flipped, from X to Y. What is more difficult is getting people to unlearn behaviours and actions which they acquired with a theory-X mindset. Even if some element of theory-Y (and agile) is now obvious people need help to learn the new way and let go of the old. Some people can do this by themselves, others need help – or at least help speeding up the change.
Yes, thats part of my job as an Agile Guide. Sometimes just talking (and reflecting on recent events) helps. Sometimes exercises (or process miniatures they are sometimes called) help. Sometimes it is by experiments, exposing people to others can help as well – so conferences, user groups.
Rarely do people change because they went on training and were lectured too, but good training incorporates talking, reflection, exercises, etc. Such training is less training and more about practicing the future.
Obviously, my training is like that: I aim to make my training courses a rehearsal for future actions. Actually, while I “sell” training I prefer to think of it as a rehearsal or kaikaku event – kaikaku events also call a “kaizen blitz”, they are big change events from the people who brought you kaizen, more on them another time.
So when someone I’ve worked with turns around and says “Agile is obvious” I take it as a sign of success. They no longer seem agile as something strange, it is normal, it is onbvious.
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