Why do we want, and need to be agile?

There's always a lot of fuss when companies or people start mentioning agile. Most likely because we've heard this story before and big changes are coming our way. While this is true, the major reason for all the fuss might be much simpler, isn't it because most don't know what agile really is?

There are plenty of explanations on what agile can be, it can be a method to reach a goal, a means to an end. It can also be a framework, with a lot of rules keeping it in place. Or maybe it just means we need to be more flexible. All valid interpretations of agile. Unfortunately some people just throw around the term to get their ways, while it has nothing to do with agile. Because what is agile really?

Agile is all about values. Just take a look at the agile manifesto:

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Responding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.

With that being said, frameworks such as scrum are just a way to get closer to our agile values. There is a product owner in place for the customer collaboration. There are sprints in place to be able to respond to changes. But in a lot of ways, we value the scrum processes the most. How often have you heard things like

We're discussing the wrong things during our stand-up.

The requirements don't cover the full 100%.

We're not ready to review with the customer present.

This was not in scope of the project.

These are examples which are the complete opposite of what the agile manifesto tells us is most important.

I don't know any company, whether it's a software company or not, who would object to the values presented in the agile manifesto. I mean who doesn't want to be valued as a person? Who doesn't value friendly and professional interactions? Who doesn't want a working product? Who doesn't want to please their customers? Who doesn't want to be able to quickly and adequately respond to changes? Agile is just a term used for values we all hold dearly. So whenever anybody starts talking about agile, just remember that if this person is sincere, this person will only want to add more values to things we all want. Because without these values we will not only lose profits, but also each other and maybe even ourselves in the long run.

Agile is just a term used for values we all hold dearly.

So I've talked a bit about what agile is, and why people want it. But why do we need it? The world hasn't grown or shrunk as far as I'm aware, but it sure does feel a lot smaller with all the digital tools handed to us. Everybody's always up to date about everything, and that's something we got used to. So if we're working on a project, we would want to be up to date all the time as well. The moment something happens during a project, we want to know it. Partly because it's our money, and we want to get the maximum amount of value for it, but also because we're simply used to getting all the information immediately. You don't want to hear some changes were made when they're no longer reversible.

Another thing we love to do in the modern world of today is to customise things. We like to design our own products, just look at mobile phones. It started with buying new casings, then adding our own ringtones, our own wallpapers, and now we design our own protectors. So when we're working on a project, we want to be able to customise it along the way as well. And we should encourage and support the constant drive to evolve and customise. Every day we get new ideas, and we want to be able to not only give this input, but to have this input handled. When a developer thinks he can make it more secure, the customer would like to hear and approve of it. When a customer thinks a button should be red, the product owner needs to know. This last one is a good example I'm going to expand on a little. Because the customers question is really easy right? Just make the button red. But that doesn't work well with other customers colour schemes. So now to make everybody happy, we will need to be able to customise said button, which is more work. We can still do it, but the customer needs more testing/accepting hours, and the developer needs more coding hours. This could mean the price will go up, the deadline won't be reached or we're going to be unable to do other things. And this exactly shows why we need to be agile, we need to be working together, interacting and responding to changes to create a working product.

We should encourage and support the constant drive to evolve and customise.

So don't panic or fuss when you hear somebody wants to be more agile, work together on the values we all expect in the modern world of today.

---

#AgileMonkeys #Agile #Evolution #Values