Theory vs. Practice vs. Experience
Everyone comes to being an Agile Coach or Scrum Master from different paths in life. There is no one answer.
However, this is no substitute for experience. I feel like I shouldn’t even have to say this because isn’t that true for every professional field? Doctors require a residency and gain varied experience before they can complete their education. Whenever you hire a handyman or any service provider, don’t you look at their prior work and references? If a handyman hasn’t done anything close to what I need them to do, it’s a problem. So, when I hire a Scrum Master, I ask questions like “Can you tell me about three different teams you’ve worked with that had very different circumstances?”
And yet, it feels like a lot of companies have hired Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches based almost exclusively on the certifications on their resume. It’s no wonder there’s some backlash happening in the industry today. Sure, there’s fear of a recession (and yet the economy and unemployment don’t look too bad). But as far as all the agile roles that have been laid off recently, I suspect there is a chain reaction that has taken place. When times were good, companies got sloppy with hiring agile specialists. And unfortunately, in our industry, there is a plethora of newly minted Scrum Masters who took a weekend course or paid $100 to take a test and got certified.
In those same companies, they might not have actually prepared properly for an agile transformation and instead “installed agile” by training up on Scrum and only executing on a “bottoms up” strategy using agile in mechanics only. No product alignment, no strategy, no focus on forming self-sufficient teams or minimizing dependencies between them. Maybe a lack of executive support or no commitment to change how they work from the top down. And very likely no training or help for the middle managers about how their jobs change and how to support the new agile teams. Agile paint.
So, my guess, some of these companies said “agile isn’t working for us” and when times got a little tough lately with interest rates going up, they let go people in agile roles.
It’s funny, the lesson is the same for individuals and organizations. You can’t get great results without the right experiences. Theory is not enough. Practice is just the beginning. You need persistence and a thorough and varied set of experiences to get good at anything.
This is Kolb’s Cycle. It’s how people (and organizations) learn.
You can start with theory (abstract concepts) and learn how to do something, but until you’ve actively started experimenting, gaining concrete experience, and then reflected on that experience do you actually learn. This is experiential learning. The first line of the Agile Manifesto says how it works… “by doing it and helping others do it.”
You might notice the similarity to the Deming Cycle (Plan Do Study Act) which has been taught since 1950. Deming used similar concepts to teach concepts of learning and continuous improvement with people and processes.
As I reflect on this topic, I’m reminded of a few famous quotes that express the same sentiment.
Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.
— Immanuel Kant
I don’t care if you have a lot of theory in your head. Without experience, real world experience, it’s not worth much. The colleagues I want standing by my side are more valuable if they’ve seen different situations, worked at different companies, helped teams of teams in really screwed up situations improve, and rolled their sleeves up to dig in and do it.
People say we learn through failure. Totally true. That’s the experimenting, experience, and reflecting in the Kolb Cycle in action. The times when we tried something and failed are often more valuable, not just because we learned what not to do, but because we have new experiences and stories to tell. We are also less afraid to try something again next time and encourage others to take the leap with us.
Edison’s quote is famous for expressing this concept. He said “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” And those failures are what led him to a tremendously profound invention.
It is in these experiments and failures where we gain experience. Here is a new quote for me from Randy Pausch.
“Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted. And experience is often the most valuable thing you have to offer.”
― Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture
That is the very point I’m hoping to make here, as an agilist. Experience is your most valuable thing you have to offer.
Your experience, especially for an Agile Coach, needs to transcend the mechanics of agile frameworks. Those who have only just received their certifications are often still early in their learning curve, perhaps even still at the very beginning learning the rules and the mechanics. With a little experience, we start to understand the why. We can apply our knowledge in the context of desired outcomes without necessarily following rules to the letter. But only with enough experiments, enough failures, a varied set of experiences does one truly embrace the mindset. The Agile Mindset is bigger and more complex than people often think.
In my set of experiences, I have paid a great deal of attention to the lessons I, and my teams, have encountered. The books I have read have fueled new experiments and learning conversations with teams. I have built my own definition of the Agile Mindset based on these experiences and perhaps some very obvious things. You can read my definition here, I share it freely.
But what I have worked on most recently is a way to help other Agile Coaches, Scrum Masters, and teams explore how to measure their progress along this journey of discovery and mastery. If you are curious about your own progress in developing the behaviors behind the mindset, I would love to invite you to become an early adopter in the Measure the Mindset service (free for a limited time).
If you enjoyed this, please clap and share. It means a lot to know my work on this blog is read and used by agilists out there in the world.
Hi, I’m Brian Link, an Enterprise Agile Coach who loves his job helping people. I call myself and my company the “Practical Agilist” because I pride myself on helping others distill down the complexity of the agile universe into easy to understand and simple common sense.
How well is your team “being agile”? Find out at MeasureTheMindset.com. Our self-assessment tool focuses on 24 topics of modern ways of working including the Agile Manifesto and Modern Agile basics, XP, Design Thinking, Lean, DevOps, and Systems Thinking. It comes with deep links into the Practical Agilist Guidebook to aid continuous improvement in teams of any kind.
The Practical Agilist Guidebook is a reference guide that gives easy to understand advice as if you had an agile coach showing you why the topic is important, what you can start doing about it, scrum master tips, AI prompts to dig deeper, and tons of third party references describing similar perspectives. Learn more at PracticalAgilistGuidebook.com
