Why Agile is not agile enough
From the Agility and Project Leadership Blog
by Don Kim
I ran into this article by Andy Hunt on the Pragmatic Bookshelf site, which is one of the well know publishers of Agile software development books. I particular liked the section with a quote from a software architect during an Agile workshop:
“The theater I did in college has helped me more in my programming career than half of my engineering courses.”—Grant Gainey, Senior Architect Developer
The article goes on to discuss how the improvisational skills learned in Theater are more in line with the kind of agility “Agile” is purportedly advocating.
The bigger issue that was revealed to me is something I have been thinking of for quite some time in that the field of project management, both traditional and Agile and everything in between has suffered from the tyranny of left brain thinking.
This is not surprising since the majority of people who have entered the field of project management are from construction, engineering and IT. So naturally the focus is still on process and analysis and nothing really much on what makes us do what we do. I know some of you Agile evangelist will argue that its focus is on people over processes, but I don’t buy that because none of the Agile methods go deeply into the humanistic aspects of why people do what they do and how they do it.
In any event, I have to admit that I have lost interest in the Agile movement and in fact am getting quite bored of it. That’s not so say that “being agile” is not important! In fact, I think Agile is not agile enough.
What’s needed is a broader perspective and one where we can learn from other fields. I’m finding that the field of behavioral economics provides a lot of empirical data that supports inferences on team motivation and dynamics and the quote above, and I may be biased since my educational background was in philosophy and comparative literature, highlights that we could definitely learn from the arts and humanities.
My writings going forward will focus on this idea of agility that will make Agile more, hmm agile.
Posted on: January 23, 2014 08:17 AM |
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Comments (3)
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Bernard Gore
Portfolio, Programme & Project Professional| NZ Police
Wellington, New Zealand
Hugely agree, and can I say it is very comforting to see someone else recognise this side of the issue. Agile is still a process-driven approach, and little I have seen in any approach to it deals with the fact that these are human beings, with all their foibles, emotions, distractions, habits, and hang-ups.
As with the early ideas of Game theory and economics, which were based on a concept that people could have "perfect information" and would act entirely logically on it, always making the "best" decision based on the information available, most Agile approaches assume that everyone will behave well all the time, will understand and fully engage, and will agree with the actions and decisions taken. The first time in an Agile process that someone refuses to agree with a group decision things rapidly break down, and Agile has no in-built way to manage this.
As with other PM approaches including PMP and Prince2, there is reference to general management of people, but soft-skills etc seem to be considered "out of scope" for PM methodology.
I can absolutely get Grant's statement about how Theater helped. For me it was two things - one a friend getting me interested in NLP, which is completely on the opposite side of things and provides the counterbalance and the comprehension of the people issue, and the other was a set of tough ex-military-run personal development programmes. When you are with a team you thought you knew, tired, cold, stretched with very challenging exercises, you start to discover what really "lies beneath", and how to really work with people!
Harlan Bridges
Consultant, Coach, Trainer, Speaker, Program Manager, Project Manager| Entrepreneur
Seguin, Tx, United States
I also agree. Of course Agile is process-driven. It is all process - go to any Agile or Scrum class and all they teach is process.
I remember my earliest classes in project management were much more focused on leadership and interaction than process. The activities were role based, dealing with how to motivate people, how to deal with conflict between team members, how to work with stakeholders, how to communicate effectively, and problem solving.
I have always found that the most successful project managers were those that were very good at the "soft skills." Two of the very best project managers I ever knew came from the technical communication field. They were both Liberal Arts majors who became technical writers and then project managers.
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