Human Transformation?

The Agile Manifesto reads:

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan

As Agile becomes more ‘mainstream’, it’s become pretty much applicable to any industry where change is unpredictable and accelerating— and which industry isn’t facing this challenge today? So one unavoidably asks the question, shouldn’t we expand this beyond just “software” to “product” and “service”?

Personally, I feel “Agile” is just us, being “Human”— everyday.

We have plans, things happen and plans changed.

• We re-prioritize through interactions, discussions and evaluations.
• We focus on getting things done.
• We discuss and align with everyone affected.
• And yeah, things change and so we change.

I’ve been asking myself the question — how do we know whether or not we are “being Agile” — and someone else adds “does it matter”?

I’ve always found analogies to be helpful so — let’s see what a “productive week” could look like, perhaps you are on a project to do something for your spouse:

• Waterfall. This is akin to burying yourself in your room the whole week, promising your spouse that you have a solution to his/her biggest problems that will make his/her life infinitely better — and yes, as he/she is very dear to your heart, of course, you know exactly what these solutions should be!
• Mini-waterfall. Very similar to waterfall, except you deliver frequently — and give him/her glimpses and pieces of the final “surprise”. Your goal here is — of course you know what he/she needs — all 25 different things. And of course, the goal is to try to deliver all 25 of them. And yes, you are “agile” somewhat and you adapt and get “feedback” but he\she is already expecting 25 things; no more, no less. You will break them up into 5 little groups of things and deliver. If lunch is here, and things are taking a bit longer, of course, you will skip lunch and still “make it happen”. Suddenly, somewhere downstairs, a fuse is blown and you rush to attend to it — and still, you will come back and make up for time. Steady as you go — you will deliver what you promised at the end of the week, come hell or high water!
• Agile….well, agile is just being human. You take a best stab at what you think will solve his/her problem — may be start with 25 things. He/She tells you though that he/she really needs 30; you say you will try. You go back to him/her every hour or two to show him/her what you have done. Half way through, you have done 15 things — 10 of which weren’t really what he/she needed when you work with him/her to refine. Then a fuse blows up downstairs and you spent a few hours replacing it. At the end, you end up finishing 20 things, 10 of which weren’t really what he/she needed. 8 were what he/she really needed so you spent more than you originally planned to refine the details.

Of course, there are lots of details but I would just surmise that being “Agile” is very close, at least for me, to being “Human”?

Sure, there will be times when we all have to commit to things. We’ve all been there — you know things need to be done. We have committed to do 50 different things; or in our university days, cramming in 50 different chapters in a day or two! There is no choice, we just gotta get to it and do it all. We can try to optimize — maybe do chapters on Electricity, Magnetism, Electromagnetism, Differential Equations together as they are all related. And Mini-waterfalls are great for that.

The thing is — it is not sustainable and should not be the norm. Can you imagine yourself being forever in the cramming mode?

So I guess it does matter whether or not we are being Agile or just using Mini-waterfall.

At the end, we are too focused on being “Agile” (or yeah, you can nitpick and differentiate between doing Agile and being Agile…) — how about we recognize that we just need to be more “Human”?