Ladies and Gentlemen take out your pens, post-it notes and flip boards
We’re about to start a Project…
I think it was in the 80’s that ABC, the TV network in the US, aired a most unconventional (award-winning) ad. The spot depicts a young boy sitting inches away from his TV, staring transfixed at the hypnotic images.
His sweet dog, a Russell Terrier I think it was, is desperate to play, and does its best to divert the boy’s attention. The dog fetches a ball and drops it in his lap. Nothing. Then a stuffed animal. Nothing. Finally another toy. Nothing. The dog can't understand it — his young master prefers the TV over him! Eventually the Terrier gives up. Resigned, it curls up in the corner, and pouts disappointedly. Then, the kicker: I can’t remember the text exactly, but the overlay on the screen read something like: “Watch less TV – Go outside and play.”
This — from one of America’s most prominent TV broadcasters!
I can't be sure what sort of improbable corporate soul searching or audience-ingratiating strategy might have motivated this, or whether it was a settlement for a class-action lawsuit.
The surprising thing was the messenger, not the message.
Now, hold on to that thought…
Earlier this month, in connection with the launch of our new startup Taiga.io, I sent a “cold” email to James Shore. Jim (I’ll use the name he used on his response) is who you might call a thought leader, an expert in the world of Agile Methodologies and Agile Coaching. For those who don't know what Agile is, or that it has its own Manifesto, or that implementing it sometimes requires coaching, suffice it to say that Agile methodologies may well be responsible in some significant way for much of the great software and gadgets coming from the hottest startups.
If that’s your world, Agile is as important to you as Taylor Swift’s new album is to my young daughters and their friends. And I’m not using Ms. Swift as a gratuitous metaphor here; The young set (i.e. startups) totally get it and know all about it, while the adults (read: more established businesses) don’t. Hence the need for coaches like Jim to make the old fuddy duddy’s hip to way of the young and, well… Agile.
Agile applies primarily to software development, but in our data-driven world, the idea is spreading fast to other areas of business such as marketing. Put simply, Agile is the natural extension of the startup mentality that’s enveloping the world: People matter, ship early and ship often, work collaboratively with customers, and when you encounter the market - ditch the plan and go with the flow. That’s the Manifesto in a nutshell.
But its simplicity can be deceiving. To implement it you basically have to wage war against the entrenched Microsoft Project, GANTT “waterfall” mentality with all its heavily regimented dependencies and micromanaged sequential processes. Can't you just hear the NASA engineers’ jaws dropping? I wonder what they think of Agile over at SpaceX…
But still, like all good wars, this one has strong armies on both sides with firm ideologies and determination. A walk along a Google search for “Agile” is very revealing indeed…I'm certainly not one to wage in with an opinion. I mean, I don't even know how to code!
But back to Jim. I had reached out to him because as a co-Founder and co-CEO of a company (Taiga.io) launching a new, Open Source, Free Agile Project Management tool, I was befuddled by the near immediate and incredibly enthusiastic response following our launch. So, I asked him:
…“The results from the launch have been stunning and completely unexpected, and that is why I am reaching out.
We spent no money marketing ($0) yet in the short space of a few days we blew past the (I thought aggressive) user forecast. We enrolled more people in few weeks (from 158 countries!) than we expected in the first 7 months….Surely some of this traffic is just curiosity, but the internal metrics we are seeing and the comments on social networks hint at pretty high engagement. We got quite a high number of hits coming from the IP numbers of Fortune 500 companies (totally unexpected) and Academia (more understandable).
Anyway, what is your view of the existing universe of tools? How would you explain the reaction to our supposedly low-key launch? I would welcome any words from someone such as yourself who is clearly very well versed in the space…”
He didn't get back to me for 2 weeks. But when he did he responded (I hope he doesn’t mind my quoting this publicly…. it’s all good, Jim — don't worry…):
“Sorry to take so long to get back to you. I saw your posting on HN (HackerNews) and I don't know why it was so successful either. :-) You hit a lot of the right buttons, though, and your pricing model is GitHub-ish, so I imagine you tickled the average HN’ers fancy.”
That was nice… But here’s where it gets interesting:
“As somebody who thinks electronic planning tools constrain teams’ ability to continually improve their process, your tool doesn't look like something I'd want to use. It’s a nicely produced, but typical example of the breed. I strongly recommend that teams use physical planning boards and I see benefits every time a team switches from electronic to physical…. I always get reactions of disbelief when I recommend physical planning. :-)….”
So here’s the thing, my co-Founder & co-CEO Pablo and I were talking about it yesterday — Jim is completely right!
I’m going to take a page from ABC’s tactics here, and say, YES…. ditch the electronics. Jim knows what he’s talking about!
If you want an Agile makeover, don't look for tools. Taiga.io and all the other tools in the “breed” are pretty useless in that respect. There’s nothing we can offer electronically to “make you” Agile. That’s because Agile is a state of mind, a culture and framework that must be developed first in the physical realm of people and relationships. How it’s later managed - physically, electronically or through a combination of both, will be a function of the team itself, influenced by any number of factors including perhaps whether the team is all local, distributed or a mix.
As my partner Pablo says,
Agile is not the new black.
Perhaps tool vendors — and we are now one of them — have (inadvertently?) hurt the Agile cause by promising that the riches of Agile (a happier, faster, more productive team) can be had by simply choosing one of our convenient monthly payment plans: Free, 10 seat, 25 or 50 seat….
You'd be right to be a skeptic. But that doesn't mean you disagree with the principles expressed in the Agile Manifesto. Perhaps that’s why experienced people like Jim, are cautious of anyone (particularly CEO’s of newly minted startups email-hawking an Agile tool) who might approach Agile as if it were some sort of electronic recipe, that can be sold at $25 per user per month as opposed to the honest cultural shift that it really is.
So there. This is the message: When it comes to Agile, selecting a tool should be a pretty low user story in your (paper) backlog.
To wrap it up and because I am a co-CEO of a newly minted startup hawking an Agile tool, I won’t go without first doing as celebrities do on late night talk shows and not-so-subtly plug our baby, Taiga.io (the one I’m recommending you not use). The one that’s really gorgeous to work with. Did I mention it’s Open Source?… And Free?
Jim and my efforts notwithstanding, I know (and hope) that some of you will want electronic tools. So I can see four reasons that could lead you to click on this link to Taiga.io:
- you are already Agile
- you don’t entirely agree with Jim
- All things being equal, you prefer Open Source
- you realize that being Agile also means dispensing with the distracting bloat and feature creep offered by our esteemed competitors.
Our advice, and the guiding philosophy we used when building Taiga.io is:
When looking for an electronic Agile companion, don’t expect that a tool will make you Agile, and be sure to chose one that keeps it simple. The more Agile you are, the more you will appreciate this.
Enrique Posner is the co-Founder & co-CEO Taiga.io
p.s. with regards to the title of this article, you should note that I did not say “Simon Says…”
