Stop copying agile. start thinking
If your last Agile workshop felt like a comfortable walk in the park, you probably didn’t learn how to handle a real-world crisis.
Recap
On Wednesday, we talked about the “Proximity problem” - teams tucked away in silos, disconnected from the people they serve. We know this is a problem. We can think how this can rob people of purpose. But knowing isn’t enough. To change the environment, we have to change how we learn to think.
The autopilot trap
Most professional training is designed for System 1 thinking: fast, intuitive and scripted. We learn the rituals (the daily, the Sprint planning, the retrospectives) without ever engaging the analytical slow-thinking part of the brain.
Where’s the problem here? Well well well. Real agility is not a set of rituals. It’s the stamina to stay in a space of uncertainty without retreating into a checklist. It’s the ability to change course when needed, prioritise subjects together with your client or transform vague needs into clear objectives, then into new builds.
This is why I am working behind the scenes on a training framework. We don’t use provocation to be useful; we use it to break the “Autopilot” habit.
I often see a specific kind of friction when I ask a team to solve a problem that doesn’t have a scripted answer. I see this often from junior developers or scrum masters. They tend to answer by the book: “We need to answer to the three questions in the daily!”, “Why don’t we use story points? We need it to be agile!”
Tip of the day
In the next daily, try with your team to talk freely about what helps you go forward as a team, towards the sprint goal. Give it the allotted time and see how it goes. The rule is just this - talk about anything that contributes towards the sprint goal (or towards your current goal as a team).
Escape the ‘best practice’ mold
There is a strong urge to ask for a “Best practice”. But we often forget to look around us and see what fits us as a team. to use the information from your trainings as a mold in which you put in your team’s context and create something unique, so that your implementation is something you can truly use and truly need.
reinventing the workshop
This is why I think that Agile training and workshops (and not only Agile, to be frank) have to be reinvented. In order to dive deep into a subject, you need to put things into perspective, to see the links between the theory and the reality. You need to have a first glimpse of how it would look like to put in practice what you’ve just learned. To involve your analytical part of the brain, to inject it with curiosity and at the end, to have a total value that exceeds the sum of the inputs.
Tip of the day:
Theory without a problem is just noise. Before adopting a new Agile practice, write down exactly which "pain" it cures for your team. If you can't name the pain, don't take the medicine.
The synergy goal
in closure, try to remember: in order to understand a new subject, you need to put things into perspective, to see the links between the theory and the reality. You need to have a first glimpse of how it would look like to put in practice what you’ve just learned.
