Why the current agile frameworks only bring you so far
- Richard
- Dec 27, 2019
- 4 min read
So you're following an agile framework, most likely some form of scrum. But something is on your mind, you just can't quite pinpoint what. You feel like something is wrong, like something is holding you back. So you ask yourself
"What are we doing wrong?"
You're doing everything the framework told you to, right? You're doing the daily stand up, the retrospective, the sprint review, the poker sessions. You refine the backlog, you even have a sprint goal set for next sprint. But still, some small voice in the back of your head is telling you it's not as smooth as you want it to be.
Well let me help you out here, you're not doing anything wrong. You're following all the rules set by the framework. But there you have it, all those rules. Not every company is the same, so the same set of rules can never work for every company. Keep that in mind, and think about your company. What is it doing, and where does it want to go?
Not every company is the same, so the same set of rules can never work for every company.
The biggest idea of being agile is in the word itself, you want to be agile, you want to be flexible, you want to be able to jump in on the wants and needs of the market, you want to be able to make the adjustments your customers are asking, you even want to be able to get rid of the technical debt your developers keep telling you about.
So stop doing what you're doing, but don't forget what you've learned. As most frameworks are very close to the truth, it is important to remember what they taught you. Just escape the imprisonment of all those rules and make your own. Feel free to reuse some, feel free to bend some, feel free to create new ones and feel free to trash some. Because if you really want to be agile, you need to have this freedom of movement.
Let's go back to what you wish for. You want to be able to quickly respond to the wants and needs of your (potential) customers. But as you might already know, their wants and needs are constantly changing, growing, evolving. And do they even know what is best for them? Are they really asking for a mind-blowing alteration that will change their world? So first thing's first. You need to create a feedback loop, and this feedback loop needs to be as short as possible. Usually this is called a sprint, where you ask your customer what to do, you start doing it, and at the end of the sprint you show your customer how far you've gotten. Now ask yourself, is this really different from your old waterfall methods? Personally, I don't think so. You just changed from a big waterfall to a small one. Or does it only look like that? How often do you release your software? Four times a year? Still sounds like big waterfalls to me. Don't get tricked by the illusion of your sprints, if you don't release every sprint. Because your customers wants and needs are going to change, between the moment you finished it in your sprint and the moment you'll release your software. Even if you've gone as far as to include them in your review, and they signed off on it, there is no guarantee they'll be happy a couple of months later.
Don't get tricked by the illusion of your sprints, if you don't release every sprint.
Now how can you change your feedback loop into something that's actually agile? Is it to release after every sprint? It sort of is, at least you'll be getting close. Then I would say you would be doing agile. But if you actually wanna be agile, I think there is only one way. You are going to need to involve everybody in everything you do, at the very moment you do it. The developers, the product owners, the designers, the customers and whoever else you have on board in your development process. Next you will need to constantly bombard them with questions:
What do you think of this change? How do you think we should implement it? Would the colour red be good for this? It'll take at least 3 days to create this, would you be able to spend at least a couple of hours this next 3 days to review?
There are a lot more questions to ask, and you need to repeat your questions. Don't worry, you, your team and your customers will grow into it. And when everybody's on the same page, on any given moment of any given day, this is where the magic happens. You can not and will not have an unsatisfied customer, you can not and will not have an unsatisfied developer, you can not and will not have an unsatisfied feeling yourself. Because at any given moment, of any given day, you will know you all agreed upon the best possible choice at that time, and no one can take that away.
In other words, to be truly agile, you need to know what the old frameworks taught you. You just need to be doing it every working minute, instead of getting tricked by the illusion of small waterfalls.
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