Modern Agile for Value Delivery and Safety
Hours of team time are dedicated to pointing out tickets and debating estimates, but no one is sure who the calculations are for. Despite the shortcomings, the team keeps following the same process. The last thing any Eng org wants is for teams to slip into “agile zombie mode,” yet industry-wide, it happens. Restart with minor or even no function, and reincorporate the process pieces that solve pain points that arise. Have an ownership mentality.
Young people now think Agile is for old people. Product people think Agile is about story points and velocity, not end-user needs. Programmers who once liked Agile have abandoned it for Software Craftsmanship. Designers prefer Design Thinking. Entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs prefer Lean Startup. While we understand their focus on monetization, we don’t have to let it stand in the way of modernization. It’s time to send our distinguished, important, but now antiquated processes and practices into retirement. It’s time to return Agile to a lightweight, joyful way of helping people achieve excellent results. Completing 1,000 PRs in a week doesn’t matter if they don’t contribute to helping the business. Keep the process lean. Call it out if part of our process is a waste of time. We’re all keepers of our approach. A project is not about code — it’s about delivering value to the customer. Our process is a living thing that we need to keep reflecting on and iterating on. Weekly kick-off meeting. We use this time to align with product/design on new customer insights, metrics, and what they’re thinking about next. Team retro every three weeks. Retros are helpful to ensure we don’t become stagnant as a team.
In Modern Agile, we ask ourselves, “How might we deliver the right outcomes faster?” Doing this requires discovering smaller increments that may be deployed now rather than later. Agile is modernizing. Modern Agile has no roles, responsibilities, or anointed practices. While Modern Agile doesn’t tell you what to create, it does state that your purpose is to Make People Awesome. We aren’t here to make a great product or company but to make our customers excellent at whatever they do with our products or services. Safety is a basic human need and a key to unlocking high performance. Making people awesome isn’t possible if people are not safe. Fear is rampant on too many teams. People are afraid to make changes, afraid to voice their opinions, and fearful of making mistakes. The trouble is fear kills performance. If you have a culture of fear, you will need more fancy processes or practices to help you. Blaming increases negativity and helps no one. Make Safety a Prerequisite means establishing safety before engaging in hazardous work. If security isn’t improved after each accident or near-miss, excellence will be elusive. Delivering value does not mean releasing a product or feature to the general public. Anything valuable that hasn’t been given isn’t helping anyone.
[¹]: Brave New Work: Are You Ready to Reinvent Your Organization?
