Agility as Behavior

I speak with people, attend discussions on Agile and Lean and also conduct trainings on Agility with focus on Scrum and Lean Thinking. People are quite enthused and interested for what it brings to those tired brains of Waterfall.


After working for a Project Manager than working for a Customer, after doing the things that Project Manager needs than the project or customer needs, and doing the way the Technical Lead sees rather than how User Sees it - and that to over and over again - one surely is bound to be tired. I mean; I surely would. So my crash course with a quick introduction to Agile Manifesto, with Agile offering so much of freedom and offerings at a little cost of ownership, commitment and discipline, people are very much  enthused about working on the Agile Project.


Most of the trainings goes in understanding Agile, comparing and matching it with Waterfall and dreaming of how will it be to work on an Agile project. But it enters a silent thinking zone when I mention "Agility is NOT a methodology .... It's the Behavior for an Individual and Culture for an Organization".


Hold on ... I understand how you feel .... and thank you for agreeing with me. But for those who are still in doubt, please read on and let me know what you think.


Agility is not about executing the project in iterations, delivering value to customer or owning the work and living the project commitment. It is not about contributing to the Product Backlog or completing the Sprint backlog, neither is it about getting on that 10 minute stand up meeting. Agility is not about delivering As Fast As Possible and definitely not about working with the team and customers. 


However it has more to do with the mindset than the practices. It is that voluntary drive within which will force you to think of Customer and the Value, provide a sense of Pride of Owning the Work and Living the Commitments, the fire to learn and improve by Collaboration and Experimentation, the flexibility to Adapt for Changing Environment, the Self-managing DNA set that continuously Ask A Why in order to find the optimal way (not the best possible one), the Brain Cells that prefers the Human Aspect as opposed to mechanical processes, a Common Sense that would ask you to go-talk-in-person than sending an email or other passive communications.


And all this if is not behavior than what is? An agile individual would always be agile and lean - no matter if that's her professional life or personal.


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Now talking about Organizational Cultures, Organizations are made of and run by individuals. Physics states - the material is made of atoms - the Organizational culture is commulitive behavior individuals working in it.


For an organization to be Lean and/or Agile, it is not sufficient to know the Agile Principle or starting initiatives. It is up to the individuals to live up to the Lean Principles. In everything they do and every minute they spend at the work, the individuals should breath and live by principles of eliminating waste, exercising the empowered rights and seeking improvement of work, work place and organization. An organization can not claim to be Lean and its floor is all cluttered with unclaimed printed waste at printer desks or has processes that become bottleneck for employees to complete their work. This is more explicit for a Software Development organization where the PDLC and PMLC processes become mandatory road blocks than facilitating the productivity improvement.


For example, for decades now, Review Processes are considered to be irreplaceable tools for Quality Assurance and Improvement. Like the code review which leads to collection of various metrics data. In the first place, Lean calls Review process as one of the Wastes. Plus, at organizations require reviewers to log defects for A. analysis of defects for defect prevention which is a good practice and B. it is required by organizational process for ISO and other certification compliance. The organization here is fouling the Lean Agility principles to a very great extent.


For an agile individual, both of above cases (A and B) are a little weird and useless. The Review process in this case should be used to improve one's coding practice and proactively avoid defects - like Pair Reviews which expects fixing of defects immediately and logging only the complex defects which can require a little more analysis (more on effective coding practices in some other blog later).


So basically the Organizational Processes - be it PDLC, PMLC or HR, Admin or support processes - should be focused around A. Facilitating and not binding  B. Enable Improving and not evaluating  C. Voluntary and not forced  D. Flexible and not Rigid  E. Evolving and not Defined -- which will lead to a Agile individuals and in turn a Lean Organization. 


And therefore Agility is purely a culture for an organisation adopted from individual behaviors of its employees.

Agility and Me

About 5 years back, I met this new thing called "Agile". New - not because it was fresh from oven and smelling fresh ...but because I was looking at it first time. And 5 years on, looked at it again and again and yet again, now I live it.

However today is the first time I am writing about it. I plan to do so more often as and when I read or understand more of it. So this first blog on Agility dedicated to myself for being an "Agile Individual"

My personal belief is that Agility is not a methodology ... but is the Behavior for an Individual and Culture for an Organization. I would write more on this some other day, but with this self-belief I look at every Agile methodology ... be in Scrum, Kanban, ScrumBan, TDD, ATDD, FDD, SF, Play Ball ... or for that matter XP.

After swimming in SCRUM world for a long time, I am getting acquainted to Poppendieck, and Cockburns and Shalloways and Andersons of Lean and Agile Community. Kanban, ATDD and Lean Agile interest me the most. SCRUM by experience and others by knowledge are far more better, capable and efficient methodologies as opposed to traditional Waterfall. Not to forget, it is Waterfall only that taught us how not to execute the projects ... so not too much criticism about it either.

Anyways, enough for a quick thing and will jump into more details of Agility in next blog ... so keep well till then ... and I promise, wont keep you waiting for long.