Agile Myopia

Long time ago a little boy decided to start a new venture. He had the great idea of starting a delivery business between the local islands.

He did not have much else to start with, so he decided to start ask around what peoples would like to deliver? How much are they willing to pay? How fast would they expect the delivery to be? and so on…

Once all requirement were collected he went to grandpa Ka Nui for a Canoe Building Plan, than he bought some wood, asked some friend for help and there you go… “Island Delivery inc.” was born.

Business grew rapidly, by the end of the year “Island Delivery inc.” owned a fleet of 100 canoes and built a point to point network capable of delivering goods between all the local islands.

Deliveries were affordable, reliable and on time. Customers loved the service and the number of packages transported was growing exponentially.

“Island Delivery inc.” was facing 2 major challenges: How to keep up with the volumes being transported and How to reach “Big Island”.

“Island Delivery inc.” CEO heard about this new guy in town, people called him “The Agile Consultant” and said he will iteratively fix any problem.

Long story short, he was hired, “Island Delivery inc.” embraced the change and become a state of the art agile shop. Paddlers organized themselves in scrum and things got better by the day and according to the Burn Down Chart another successful sprint was just around the corner.

All good except “Big island”, no paddlers could figure out how to get there, the distance was just to long, the currents were just too strong, and the improvements made to the canoe so far were just not enough.

Everybody new that something different needed to be build, Product Owner even wrote a story for it:

As a Paddles I should be able to reach “Big Island”

Multiple spikes were created but unfortunately no own could break down this story in task that could fit in a Sprint and the Scrum Master was categorically refusing to allow the team working on a BDUF for a totally new boat.

Sprints went by and “Big island” was not getting any closer. Team got frustrated because no matter what they tried nothing seamed to work…

One day a foreigner arrived on a brand new motorboat and all of a sudden “Island Delivery inc.” business was in jeopardy. Most of the competitive advantage that “Island Delivery inc.” used to have was gone. Now it was time to fight for survival.

Unfortunately we do not how this tales ended but people learned that scrum team can become affected by “Agile Myopia”. The symptoms of this desease can be difficult to spot because it no agile artifacts are able to detect it.

It’s therefor recommended that the team keep looking up head in the distance, way beyond the next sprint for disruptive technologies so that adequate plans can be put in action before it is to late.