5 surprising learnings about Agile that dramatically improved my performance
From theory to experience: 5 key surprising learnings from working on agile project management IT projects.
What is agile project management?
Open a book on agile and should find this kind of definition: Agile project management is a methodology, which emphasizes collaboration and frequent reviews of user needs by frequent deliveries, rather than long term planning of project tasks and their implementation (i.e. Waterfall methodology).
However, I find a little metaphor on sailing could be a better way to introduce the methodology.
Let’s say you are the captain of a sailing ship and you plan how to go to all the way to the US from Europe. The waterfall methodologies guys would tell you: look at a map of the world and take your time to make tons of calculations on where to go and how to avoid strong winds or currents. Because going to the US is complicated and you cannot just wing it. You might talk to previous sailors, who went to the US successfully or even hire sailing consultants, who will teach you everything there is to know about sailing to the US. You should of course plan and buy everything you need in your boat in advance, select your crew based on each task so, you do not miss anything. You feel good that you have a plan; everything is going to be under control. However, let’s say that pirates board your ship. As you are an exceptionally good captain, you have anticipated that event by having an end to end procedure for pirate management. Three necessary months of hard planning and there you go; you are ready to sail off to the world.
On the other hand, the agile methodologies guys from the SCRUM tribe would tell you a different story. Dear captain (scrum master), spend only 3 hours to plan for the entire trip to the US because so many things will go wrong you are not won’t be able to stick to it anyway (backlog).
Oops, that’s one hell of a less confident captain right there.
Instead we will teach you how to make and adjust your plan every 2 weeks. You will stick to it for 2 weeks and then revise it based on the progress of your journey (sprint). For your team, you should take sailors with a lot of complementary skills because you are not sure what you will face (Sprint Team). At the start of the journey, you should have a team meeting to decide together where to go and what to do for the next 2 weeks (Sprint Planning), write all the tasks together to ensure everyone understands them (Stories and Backlog Grooming). Every morning your crew will tell you if they have problems to stick to the plan (Daily Meetings). It will be your job to remove everything that blocks their progress because you are not the boss as you do not touch one single sail… After 2 weeks, you should have a meeting to demonstrate your progress and assess where you are on your trip (Sprint Demo). Then, take a moment to assess how you can improve how things are done on the boat (Sprint Retro). Don’t forget to check your client’s plans to make sure you still have to go to the US or if the client changed his mind and would rather go to Brazil, because he discovered he loves more Caipirinha than Burgers (Backlog Prioritization by the Product Owner). Burgers are still in fashion? OK, we are still going to the US.
YEY!
You and your team start again to plan for the next 2 weeks (Sprint Planning). Therefore, every 2 weeks you plan, celebrate, assess, and repeat. Moving forward to the last two weeks, you reached the statue of the liberty while the waterfall captains are still making their plan on where to go. Congrats!! You guys rock!!
So now that you grasp the basic principles and foundation of the methodology. Let’s look at the unexpected as that is usually where the true learnings reside. In fact, working on several agile projects, I could confirm that agile does allow you to get closer to users’ needs for business or innovative IT projects. However, I did as well discover 5 surprising learnings along the way…
Surprising learning #1: Agile brings meaning to people by showing them the impact they have every sprint
This one is simple, but particularly important. People like to see the result of their work. And fast. Beyond better user need management, agile really helps identify the meaning and impact of what team members are delivering. Literally, instead of running a motivation marathon, with quick sprints you are keeping your team’s spirits engaged and rewarded.
Surprising learning #2: Agile is a powerful tool to get budget funding and organization engagement around your project to ensure its success.
The conditions of success (or failure) of a project are not given from the start. By showing results frequently during sprint demos, I was surprised that the engagement of project sponsors and transversal teams were increasing over time. Like the team members, who get motivated by quick results, stakeholders in organizations were committing more time and often more resources. That ensures an improved project success rate. You should invite large number of stakeholders for your demos, you will be surprised by the impact they have.
Surprising learning #3: Agile puts you out of your comfort zone, because it tests your ability to cope with constant change.
There is a common joke that being agile is constantly winging project without true structure. On the contrary: agile is surprisingly very structured. Let me say it again, very very structured. The methodology even tells you how long your meetings should last and whether you should sit or stand! It is true that standing makes meetings usually last shorter. But my belief is that during constant change, these structured meetings and rituals bring comfort to the team by giving them predictability and routine. You may not know what you will work on during the next sprint, but you know that it will comprise of daily meetings, sprint retrospective and demo. These structure rituals allow the team to find needed predictability and compensate for constant change and speed of deliveries.
Surprising learning #4: Some agile practices can be used outside IT projects
Any project or teams can benefit from retrospective (team meetings where you provide feedback to each other on how to improve efficiency in the team). Testing frequently user needs and assumptions can be powerful too. And a demo of your progress to your department can showcase the work done by your team and provide great feedback. Who said as well that you needed a weekly team meeting? Try 15mins checkups to understand where your team is at!
Surprising learning #5: Agile needs to be coupled with a strong vision. Thus, methodology such as Design Thinking areuseful to ensure that the overall product fits a coherent vision.
I felt sometimes short sighted during agile projects. Being truly clear on short term requirements but failing to see the overall objective. Thus, I believe that agile project should start by a design sprint where you define the overall product vision (design thinking methodologies can be useful in this case). By doing so, and referring frequently to it, the team will not swift from wave to wave but keep in sight their liberty statue destination or … decide to go for a caipirinha, as I just might right now 😉
Why write a serie about surprising learnings? My grandmother calls it good old-fashioned experience, Oprah calls them ha-ha moments, Ethnographers call them “breakdowns” (Agar, 1982). To me, surprising learnings are moments in my journey where knowledge needed to be created before new understandings could occur. Overall, all these surprising learnings are memories of when my theoretical expectations where deliciously challenged by experience, creating opportunities to see the world in new ways. Surprising learnings are stories of my personal growth.
