Now that “Agile is Dead” we can all get more agile

With the collapse of the Agile Industrial Complex you may be wondering; Does any of that stuff matter any more? Of course it does. Good practices are good practices, regardless of the ‘Big Idea’ or movement they are associated with.

But which practices matter? Which are universal and which are situational? How should you prioritise what you pull into your organisation?

It’s time for us all to shift our focus from following a prescribed methodology or framework to selecting and adapting practices that best suit your specific context. This is a return to how we used to adopt agile stuff in the early days; one small bite-sized improvement at a time.

Which Practices Matter?

There are fundamental principles and practices that tend to be universally beneficial across most organisations and situations:

• Customer Focus: Prioritise understanding and delivering value to customers.
• Collaboration: Foster effective communication and teamwork within and across teams.
• Iterative Development: Embrace a cycle of continuous improvement through frequent feedback and adaptation.
• Technical Excellence: Emphasise high-quality craft skills, automated testing, and continuous delivery.
• Delegate Decision-Making: Trust and empower teams to make decisions and take ownership.

These core principles often translate into specific practices like:

• User Stories: Capture customer needs in a concise, actionable format with clear measures of performance.
• Stand-ups: Hold daily brief meetings for team synchronisation, and as a platform to find ways to help each other.
• Retrospectives: Regularly reflect on how you work together, and improve your team’s processes and environment.
• Quality Systems: Ensure code quality through peer feedback like automated tests, pair programming or code reviews.
• Test-Driven Development (TDD): Write tests before code to guide development and improve your design skills.

Prioritizing Practices

To determine which practices to adopt, consider the following:

1. Context: Assess your organization’s specific needs, challenges, and goals.
2. Experimentation: Start with a few core practices and gradually introduce others based on their potential value and fit.
3. Get early wins: Don’t try to solve your hardest challenges first. Build up your improvement fitness and get some early wins to build momentum.
4. Feedback: Continuously gather feedback from your teams to assess the effectiveness of adopted practices and make adjustments as needed.
5. Adaptability: Be prepared to modify or discard practices that don’t work in your context.

The key is to prioritise practices that align with your organisation’s values, promote collaboration and continuous improvement, and ultimately deliver value to your customers.

Let us know if you would like a deeper dive into any of these practices or further guidance on prioritising them for your organisation.