Media
"Back to basic agile. If anyone tells you that agile is a philosophy, run. Actually, don’t, start swinging."
“Basic” sounds like a subscription tier. “Basic”, “Pro”, “Platinum”, “Enterprise”… One Agile tier with scope and pricing to match every economic buyer’s and every seller’s/peddler’s economic needs.
There is no such thing as “basic agile”
The “Manifesto for Agile Software Development”, put forth by a few guys based on their common appreciation for software development practices they found conducive to getting software development work done, was rapidly turned into the “Agile Manifesto”, then to “Agility”, “Enterprise Agility”, and a whole cottage industry of certification schemes, badges, and eventually into abominations like SAFe (that’s the “Enterprise” tier).
Is it a philosophy? A mindset? An adjective? What is it?
For sure, what it is is a fad. Like all fads, it started from something that had value to some who understood it, and (d)evolved into a circus.
And the true answer is: more often than not, it’s whatever you want it to be, in order to convince either a hiring manager that you tick a box on the job description, or to convince a consulting client that “doing Agile” with your preferred variant / subscription tier ie going to allow them to say they “are Agile”.
“What do you think Agile is? It’s not enough to be angry about what you think it’s not.”
Words have a meaning.
Let’s look at “Agile”:
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“able to move quickly and easily” (Oxford Languages)
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“marked by ready ability to move with quick easy grace” and “having a quick resourceful and adaptable character” (Merriam-Webster)
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“able to move your body quickly and easily” (Cambridge Dictionary)
To summarize:
Agile means moving quickly, gracefully, with readiness to move, with resourcefulness and adaptability.
Elevating this attribute to a philosophy or mindset is part of what’s hokey about the Agile circus.
The actual definitions of the adjective actually make the entire discussion about “Enterprise Agility”, “Agile Transformation”, “Agile Mindset” etc. tragicomical.
“Why is it hokey? If one thinks of a mindset of adopting practices and processes that aid in moving with a quick resourcefulness and adaptability… is that Agile? In short, utilizing processes that allow for resourcefulness and adaptability, instead of rigidity and pre-determination, is key to increasing Agility.”
Why? because for decades many companies (usually smaller ones) did all those things without elevating what they did to some philosophy or mindset.
But now, suddenly if it’s good it’s Agile; and if it’s labeled as Agile, then it must be good.
Agile, as it stands today, is a PR buzzword first and foremost, a bunch of organizational straitjackets , second, and only at a distant third is it about actually figuring out with the people what Agility or Agile should mean for their context, and how it’s achievable, without subscribing to any certifier’s business model.
Resiliency, resourcefulness, responsiveness, adaptability, openness to experience (for experimentation), sensible disagreeableness (the basis for productive conflict within a team), a bias for figuring things out, thinking in systems… Expecting this from any organization sounds like a pretty tall order, even before you consider that some of those prerequisites for “agile behaviors” are strongly linked to Big 5 personality traits, and can therefore not be imposed on expected by everyone in the org.
"…make people understand better what is involved in becoming more agile."
The problem is that those who understand it must wake up to the fact that they tied their horse to something that was appropriated by those who never cared to actually understand it, but want to make a quick buck by catering to misguided needs and wants of economic buyers, i.e. the idea that there are neat, closed-form prescriptions for solving wicked organizational problems, even without taking into account the context and the actual business needs.
You can’t criticize what Agile turned into and at the same time use the term to describe your offering and hope that people will spend time discerning the difference of what you have to offer vs. all the painless promised-lands that hucksters and peddlers offer.
It’s a marketing, branding and positioning problem.
In a world that’s inundated with MBA graduates regurgitating Harvard Business review articles, and consulting companies peddling breathless hype as slide decks to sell their services promising the world to well-meaning but also wishful-thinking executives, you pretty much stand no chance of actually finding those clients who will understand that it’s not all as simple as it’s being portrayed in order to make big bucks or a quick buck.
“The Zero Hype Bundle” explores the above, and more, helping you to see the hidden costs of business “miracle cures”, both on the organizations adopting them, and on the professional trajectory of those peddling them either directly or indirectly through the proud display of certifications and enthusiasm.
