Are you REALLY Agile?

Agile is quite an encompassing term covering a multitude of actual techniques. My own personal favourite brand of agile is Scrum. Working in software development, I have worked with many different methodologies Scrum is the one I have found to be the best so far.

There are many people, however, who really don’t like Scrum. That is fine, each to their own. There is one thing that I find problematic though. This is when people say “I hate Scrum, we use it and it just doesn’t work!”

Now, there are some teams and environments where perhaps this is true, and it just does not work for them. On further investigation, however, there is often a common theme for these tales of agile woe.

The story usually goes something like this…

“So, we implemented Scrum. We followed the instructions, we have a product backlog, sprint planning, daily standups, retrospectives and reviews but work still sucks…”

The problem with Scrum is that it deceives people. It appears simple, so companies often send people to training or read a book. A developer or project manager is made Scrum master, usually without understanding that this is a fulltime role. The rituals and artefacts are adopted and then… nothing.

You see, doing standups, having a product backlog and reading whatever books you have on Scrum does not make you agile. To get the real benefit from Scrum requires change throughout the business. This is a long process and potentially a difficult one. It demands a lot of dedication and energy to implement Scrum and begin to reap the benefits.

To me, Scrum is about empowerment. We are empowering developers, testers, UI/UX designers and everyone involved in the development of software. It must be collaborative, supportive, productive and exciting. It requires effort and real passion. It requires managers to relinquish control and have faith in the people they work with. It needs people to understand more than the mechanics, they must believe in the philosophy!

How can you tell when you are genuinely agile? If your team is working together, producing great software and enjoying it, then you just might be agile.