So over the weekend, I read ‘Agile2.’ I’ve been thinking a lot about the issues with agile-as-it’s-practiced (and as I’ve practiced it), and the points of success and failure it’s led to for me and for others. And I was hopeful about the book from what I’ve read about it, and from the respect I have for the authors.
I’m less hopeful now – but still want to encourage all my agile friends to buy and read the book.
Here’s my fundamental stance: Agile needs a pivot. We’ve done some good, and we’ve earned (largely) our keep – but as they say, what got us here won’t get us there.
I’m not nearly alone in thinking this.
I’ve had two clients this year – and they both think it. The people I respect in the Agile community - many of them, but not all of them – think it.
And I think we’re all looking for some direction.
With that in mind, I chilled reading in the living room this weekend as my wife dealt with her all-day union meeting.
And when I was done, I was of two minds. I do think everyone who does agile for a living ought to read it. I see it as a collection of good to great practices – a lot of which I’ve done for a long time and other good agilists and project/program leaders have done for a long time - but some that are new and many better expressed than I’ve seen them elsewhere.
But the book is absolutely a Fox (in the Isiah Berlin sense, not in the Megan-in-Transformers sense); it’s a basket of many things, tied to a long list of principles.
They are good principles, and if they aren’t already a part of your toolkit, they should be.
What it’s not is what made Agile or SAFe so powerful – a unifying model – it didn’t bring the Hedgehog.
It needs one. Both for clarity and to give a rule for ‘what gets in’ – because I can see the list of principles being endlessly extended (much like the operating rules in RoboCop II). It feels like some of the organizations I’ve coached that have lacked strategic clarity – there’s a lot of awesome stuff in the portfolio, but not enough guidance on what and how to prioritize and select.
We need a new model for Agile in the 21st Century. Over the next week or so I’m going to build and share a list of what it needs to do to satisfy my thinking – what problems it needs to solve - interested to hear what it needs to do from other folks’ point of view.
We don’t want to throw out the baby with the bathwater. At the core of AAIP is a humane, dynamic model that can allow for adaption, creation, and complexity – but that can also gain a strong foothold and survive in the real world of organizations.
We’re just not going to get there with the models we have.