Tom Breur
24 September 2017
The “art” of Agile is maximizing the work not done. Despite fantasies that many
managers seem to hold, transitioning to a more “agile” mode of operating will
not suddenly improve your output. There is no magic involved. Adopting Agile
practices offers no free lunch, no matter how much you may have hoped for one.
Think about this for a minute. You hired competent staff,
and empowered them to do a good job. How can changing or transforming your work
processes (“adopting Agile”) all of a sudden lead to a step change (increase)
in productivity? What were they doing until now?!? It is logically impossible
to do more work faster, but you can certainly do less sooner. If you had faith
in your staff’s attitude and best intentions, you therefore cannot expect any “magic”
from Agile. To think otherwise exudes a rather grim opinion about the very same
people you as a manager yourself were responsible for hiring.
Agile does work, however. By focusing on “value” as
perceived by the Product Owner (Scrum) or Customer (XP) you hone in on those things,
at the expense of all those tasks and
rituals that were customary in your shop. Dropping activities from your portfolio
can be a little bit disruptive. But unless you stop doing them, you will not
free up additional time to spend on value added (!) work. You just can’t square
a circle.
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