Authored by Aleksandr Kizhner, AgileThought, also a blogagility.com contributing author.
April 24, 2018
I strongly believe that every software development team is a very HIGH-IQ team, and we can’t just impose practices on them. They have to understand the WHY. There is the book called “Start with Why” by Simon Sinek, and it talks about what’s foundational to motivate human behavior. We must start with “WHY are we doing this? ”
Too many organizations bring in an experienced agile coach and do all necessary training, and they’ll try to force a package of behaviors onto teams. BUT it won’t stick… WHY ????
Instead of telling them what the solution is, people have to be part of it. This is why I try to attend conferences and webinars, training, reading many valuable blogs and publications and connect with other agile coaches for GUIDANCE.
A team needs to be empowered to evolve beyond those initial agile practices as needs present themselves. That is what Agile is all about. If there is a challenge, and there is an agile practice that will help solve it, pull in that practice. What that does is it allows a team to go on the Agile journey and understand WHY they are adopting there new practices, versus me telling them, ” You MUST have a RETROSPECTIVE every two weeks and your SPRINT can only be three weeks. ”
What I also found important in adopting Agile Scrum is established a keystone behavior. How do I establish habits? How does team establish habits? In all these cases there is a keystone behavior. So say, I want to lose weight ( and YES I do need to …) One keystone behavior is to keep a journal of what I eat and my activities ( thanks to Google Health for helping me with that ). Its a catalyst, the first domino. For Scrum teams, what I’ve noted is the Sprint and the retrospective are the keystones that establish behaviors. They establish a cadence for communication, and they give them a mini-pattern for collaborating.
So, what we decided is: There is actually no destination with Agile way developing software as there is no a single path to awesomeness, You with your team start eating at the agile practices buffet table and you with your team choose what you need, and that’s it, AND WHEN YOU’RE FULL, YOU STOP EATING …
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