My fragile agile soul
“The greatest teacher, failure is” — Yoda
When I started out in IT, my first job was as an iOS developer. That job gave me a good understanding of how to build software. I soon had my first experience with agile ways of working and frameworks. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a good one.
As a junior developer, I worked hard to learn as much as I could about things like Scrum, Kanban, and SAFe®. I realized that a lot of people who used these tools and frameworks had a hard time understanding them. So I decided that I would try to do something about that problem.
From junior developer to full-time Scrum master
Since that decision, I’ve made it my goal to help teams to uncover better ways of working together. The team I currently work in has achieved amazing things. The team members are evolving and learning new things every day. They are a fantastic group of people, and I’m glad to be their Scrum master.
But despite the successes we’ve had, something doesn’t feel right. I can’t feel that fantastic transformation feelings other agile coaches and Scrum masters talk about. How they transform teams and companies into innovative, agile product catalyzers. The more stories I hear about that kind of thing, the less agile I see myself be.
“Can you tell me more about how it feels.”
I decided to get help and talked to a senior agile coach and colleague. By having an outsider analyze how I work with the team, he started to notice some bad stuff. Building an agile team and getting them to work with non-agile clients is a bad combination. It has led me to make some terrible compromises. Compromises, I would never allow if I was the one who analyzed the situation.
I can, with this knowledge and without going into too much detail, say that I’m guilty of working with faux agile. I can spend hours talking to people on how to spot and how to avoid faux agile. My job is to make sure that it doesn’t happen. But I’ve allowed myself to turn to the dark side, and it’s tearing me apart.
Unlearn what you have learned
But who would I be if I didn’t accept the truth, learn from it, and start making changes? My big epiphany came when I saw a keynote about Modern Agile by Joshua Kerievsky.
“I once was lost, but now am found…”
Since then, I’ve started to think more about what being agile means. It’s not about following the rules of a particular framework. It’s not to convert relative estimates to hours because it’s “easier” to plan the project that way. It’s not about giving up on agile values because clients don’t understand what agile means.
It’s about understanding people’s pains and frustrations so I can help them move forward and become stronger together as teams. It’s about assisting the teams to see that they are unique and that every team has their own unique way of working.
I dare to say that a lot of us have lost our agile ways in the framework and certification frenzy. We are afraid to admit failure, I included. But if we continue to work with faux agile, we will never be able to help teams and companies to become agile.
“Safety is both a basic human need and a key to unlocking high performance.” — Modern agile
We must create safe environments to make people know that it’s okay to fail. Even agile coaches and Scrum masters fail. We are only humans, after all. It’s when we fail that we have the best opportunity to learn and uncover better ways of working. A culture of fear about admitting to faux agile will only create more faux agile.
The end of the beginning
A lot of people start with being “Agile™ 4.5.8® Certificate approved” instead of being agile. Future teams will focus less on frameworks and what certifications to get. They will want to focus on being as awesome as possible. My job will be to make sure that they can do that.
“I’d like you to know the definition of agile, so you can avoid faux agile: thoughtless, process-heavy, ritualistic approaches to agility that don’t produce wonderful outcomes.” — Joshua Kerievsky
With Modern Agile, we move into the next chapter of what being agile is all about. Scrum and SAFe® will live on and be successful in different contexts. But all legacy code is, at some point, refactored into something much more effective.
It’s scary to see how easy it is to fall into bad behaviors even though you know how to spot and avoid them. Deep down in my heart, I understand what being agile is all about. This revelation marks the start of my most significant agile transformation yet. The agile transformation of myself.
