Getting to Ready

Bart has been in ecommerce for over 20 years, and can't imagine a better job to have. He is interested in all things agile, or anything new to learn.

  Agile   Requirements Management   Teams  

One of the interesting paradoxical principles of Agile states that the future is both unknown and unknowable, but the team must plan for it anyway. An Agile team needs to be comfortable in a world that is full of uncertainty, but where planning is necessary, which can create some stress and worry amongst the team members. Saying it isn’t enough; it won’t be sufficient to merely tell the team to get used to living with ambiguity, it takes time and experience for a team to learn how to properly function in this kind of environment. And even after years of working in an Agile organization, teams, developers and stakeholders will still act as if the right thing to do is to attempt to eliminate all uncertainty before any progress can be made. This has the result of paralyzing the team or getting them stuck in a cycle of waiting for clarity that never really comes. The best way to move forward is to actually move forward and be prepared to adjust along the way. This is the “Plan, Do, Adapt” cycle that is at the heart of Agile.

There are signs to watch out for when a team gets stuck trying to completely eliminate uncertainty. For instance, a team can continue to attempt to gather requirements, or refine stories, or otherwise try to break down unknowns into smaller and smaller pieces. Teams will often keep a list of “open questions,” and simply refuse to move forward until some or …

Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.