Agile, what it means to us.

We’re seeing a lot of to-ing and thro-ing about Agile, it’s success and failure. There are a lot of blogs, posts and tweets which let anyone who wants to, throw it away and dismiss it out of hand.

From our fledgling point of view, the point is being missed.

To work, Agile must be all about allowing a team to do what it naturally wants to do.

That’s it in a nutshell. You can’t use Agile to get a team to toe the line. You can only use it to nurture the natural instincts of a team.

So be very careful about the team you pick. Cultivate a team that will align itself with the business goals, often something like:

• making money,
• shortest path to making lots of money
• doing so sustainably

The team’s instincts will likely include pride. So your business needs to add to its goals:

• making product the team can be proud of.

Then really, Agile is just a matter of trusting people. If your ecosystem cannot support trust, you will probably embrace micromanagement.

We’re not being cheeky, Agile is not the only way to success or failure. But Agile is our only way.