Refocusing on Agility by Al Shalloway

Effectively adopting Agile requires us to learn Agile product management, proper decomposition of stories, technical agility, and effective collaboration. These need to be supported by workflow management and the proper organization of the talent. The first set is the work of Agile while the later are typically provided by frameworks. When considered this way we should ask – “what combination of doing the work and learning a framework to support it is most effective?” Clearly, one needs both. But the Agile space has focused more and more on frameworks. Resulting in initial training leaving out key abilities. Even when these are discussed in an initial workshop they rarely go as deep as working on the participants’ actual work. For example, INVEST and SMART are characteristics of good stories but can be likened to the recipe and not the meal provided by Acceptance Test Driven Development.

By focusing on the framework we delay the actual knowledge needed by teams to be effective. The way we learn Agile has to shift to our work, not the framework. Frameworks are useful as tools, but they don’t make the carpenter. This talk discusses why we need to get back to refocusing on Agility itself – how the work is done. Frameworks are useful, but only in support of what we are attempting to accomplish. Agile, of course, is a being as much as a doing. But it is important to remember Neil Pasrichas’s adage “that it is easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than thinking your way into a new way of acting.”

Connect with Al at Net Objectives

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