Over the last few years I have worked on implementing Agile. This is quite different to using an pre-existing Agile process or template. Its also very different to getting involved in an Agile team that already up and running. Building Agile from the ground up is not something people do very often – and worse than that, if they do, they don’t do it very well.
In part, there is a responsibility of success on the person leading the team – they need to be able to absorb new ways of status reporting, change control, etc (see my article on the Glass Office). But, crucially, a vast majority of success is actually down to the people who are in the team. One of the Agile secrets that isn’t very well known or widely published (someone called it a dirty secret to me recently) is that its actually down to the type of person in the team.
Agile is based on a premise of understand what the outcome is, then work out what is the most acceptable way of achieving that outcome, note down how you will measure if you have made the outcome and then go do it. As you work on the method of the outcome, then you continuously care about improvement on the way you do it. You care about the outcome, you care about quality, you care about learning and wanting to understand new methods and ways of improving yourself.
Agile will not work if you don’t have a team or group of people who are willing to adapt and try new things and ways of working. Without a “lets see if it works” mentality the team will never be successful. Retrospectives and CI (Continuous Improvement) are threaded through all of the Agile work – you have to be able to try new things and see if they add value or not. You have to be able to look at your current way of working and see if you can improve it…
For Agile to be successful you need a group of people are willing to adapt and learn and try new things. They mustn’t be afraid of failure and they must never be afraid of change.
Getting the right kind of team, and this extends out to the user community as well as the delivery team, is key to success.