Frustrated & Angry Agile Enthusiast

I don’t remember why I got interested in agile software development. Probably I just was curious to understand what is this “Agile” people are talking about. What I remember, is that in the beginning I was angry. I thought that the Agile way of doing things is the only right one, and all the other ways were wrong — or at least worse.

Years later I understood why I was angry: I was unable to handle my frustration as the most people in the organization didn’t get the benefits of agile methods and rather wanted to stay in the old. I thought that people were not listening and, hence, I needed to state my message more loudly. It took years to calm down. I’m seeing the same angriness especially in the companies in early stages of agile: the early adopters of agile in those companies tend to be angry and frustrated.

Back then, in 2008, I worked in Finnish mid-sized IT consultancy called Endero (currently Knowit) as a senior software developer, and from 2010 as a solution architect. I became an agile change agent and started to promote Scrum and agile mindset there. When I left the company five years later the business unit I worked in followed Scrum practices.

In many ways I succeeded in what I started: I had initiated a bottom-up agile transformation and it had changed everything from the way to do development to the sales promise. It didn’t feel like so when I left: I was full of frustration due to poor progress and all those things I didn’t manage to make real. For the sake of clarity, even if I started this transformation more or less alone, I was not the only person who made it happen — far from that. At some point, also the management started to drive the transformation from waterfall to agile. Nonetheless, I felt that I’m in the minority and needed to to fight against “non-agile thinking”. It took years to realize how distorted my point of view was.

Two faces of frustration

I’m still not sure, if I should have left earlier or not. Once the energy of frustration become cynical and tiring rather than forward-pushing motivation for change, it’s always better to leave. This happened to me — probably. I’m not sure. Just before I left, I was far too cynical to my taste. Yet, till the very last day in the company, I also drove change toward better. I never lost my optimism and willingness to build better tomorrow.

Frustration is a weird and contradictory thing. In the best case, frustration is passionate energy to make things better and it is at the same time inability to feel full satisfaction when things are changing to good direction. Even if it hurts, it push you forward. It’s alike inspiration but bitter and gloomy. Therefore, the change is usually too slow and too small for a change agent. In the worst case, frustration is an outburst of hopelessness and incapability to change things for better. It’s no more a dark brother of inspiration. It has become a fetter and mental poison. No matter if frustration has positive overall impact or not, it radiates and infects others. Hence, it’s dangerous force even when it initiates a highly positive change.

Be a junctions, not a comforter

It’s great if someone can help you to see all the good things emerged from the change you’ve driven and celebrate them. I didn’t have such a person, and I think I didn’t manage to control my frustration that well in the end.

I hope I have been such a person for someone — and will be one for many others.

I don’t want to be a comforter who makes you stay amid frustration no matter what. I don’t want to make the pain of frustration go away, or even reduce. Rather, I want to make frustration meaningful and worthy. I want to be a junction in two sense: First, I want to help people connect the impact they have made and could make to the change they wished to see but did not and most likely never will. The change is need not to be perfect to be good and worth of all the effort. Second, when the frustration becomes too big, I want helps them leave and let go without bitter cynicism and anger. The first junction is about connection between dreams and perceived reality. The second junction is about connection between what you want to become and the story you’re telling about yourself.

Nowadays, I’m happy that I had the opportunity to do the change I managed to do in Knowit. It was not perfect, maybe it was not even good enough, but it certainly was worth of all the effort.