The dispel magic of Agile

If you browse online the two words together “Agile” + “magic” you’ll find a bunch of pretty good stuff telling you that Agile is no miracle, no silver bullet, no panacea, not the ultimate XXI technique coming to us to solve all of our problems, no magic.

And I kind of agree. One cannot set up the teams according to the chosen Agile methodology in someone’s mind, tell everyone what to do and the artifacts they have to manage in a kickoff meeting and expect the rules, roles and values to be fully enacted and the people start performing imperiously like the Big Kahuna in a couple of iterations. Though that would be a start, it’s very unlikely to really sink in on its own with nothing else happening along the way.

On the other hand, I kind of disagree. As you probably know, problems or hindrances are usually difficult to detect since they can hide very well, mislead very well and camouflage very well. I’m not talking about technical problems alone. Those related to the culture, dynamics and work philosophy are equally important. These problems act as some kind of bad magic residing in the heart of our processes and affecting silently our performance. This bad magic may poison our minds with wrong conclusions, provoking defects, time loss and missing opportunities. One common trickery of this bad influence is to conclude that the Agile process is actually not working. That usually leads to disappointment, frustration and a fallback maneuver onto previous traditional methods more ‘reliable’ for the work we are doing. In the most drastic scenarios someone gets a wake-up call, or even fired…

Regardless of the format, Agile, when given the opportunity, is really good at surfacing the problems wherever they might reside within your process. Then if Agile was to be called ‘magic’, it would not be a lightning bolt or a great ball of fire (let’s not get drastic here) but would be something subtler, something that strips away this so-called bad magic and exposes the issues clearly.

A kind of dispel magic.

When you don’t know what is really going on but indeed there is something going wrong, a magic wand telling the good from the evil would be not only useful but desirable, wouldn’t it?

So, what things can you dispel by using Agile?

1. By allowing teams to fail fast once or twice you are dispelling the illusion that failure is always a negative result yielding nothing more but failure, when from failure is actually when you learn the most (And iterations let you recover on time)
2. By acknowledging that product information is shared between all roles you are dispelling the practice of hoarding the details and minimizing the lack of transparency that impedes a correct understanding of what is being built. Ultimately, sharing leads to creative, surprising solutions.
3. By focusing more on people rather than on processes you are dispelling the illusion of safety derived from a set of unchanging rules which everything and everyone must adapt to. Bending the rules as a team is part of several models of mastery team development.
4. By letting people self-organize and self-direct you are dispelling the belief that people must be commanded and directed in order to do their jobs. High performing teams are given freedom within a time frame, and that brings out the best in them for the product.
5. By empowering teams to make decisions in their area of expertise you are dispelling the belief that decisions must always flow through a hierarchy of managers accepting or rejecting solutions, and these intermediaries are not always enough qualified for it.
6. By accepting that the product goal is a moving target you are dispelling the need of upfront, extensive plans that won’t change in time expecting the goals to be static in the long term.
7. By facilitating team co-location and face to face communication you are dispelling the illusion of virtual tools and electronic assets replacing human interactions at its completeness. Allow teams to lean on tools but not give in to tools.
8. By focusing around customer’s changing needs you are dispelling the illusion of safety coming from a set of unchanging requirements written in a years-long contract (which on the other hand forces the customer to foresee the future in order to not be penalized). Foresight is another kind of magic, right?
9. By focusing solely on delivering value you are exposing all kinds of non-value related artifacts growing inside your process (extra features, waiting times, handoffs, detects...) consuming time, energy and resources that eventually bog the performance down.
10. By allowing reflection you are facilitating improvements and fixes on time. Therefore, you are dispelling the belief that it is a lingering activity to be done when time allows for it, when actually it's crucial to improve people's skills and processes collaboratively.

There are probably more, but the previous ones came to mind rather quickly.

A word of caution though:

• Consider that not all projects work well with Agile, then applying the agile practices without considering the mindset could not bring the expected results. Apply the correct magic to the correct target.
• Agile is no magic still, and it requires effort for changing things that have been placed there for years. Also, it requires high discipline and a nice dose of inspection and transparent evaluation. No magic will happen if no effort, inspection and adaptation is conducted vigorously and regularly.

What about you? Do you see other dispelling effects of Agile?