Naturally Agile

Hi, I just added a comment to a linkedin discussion regarding Agile frameworks. I thought I’d also share here to see if it sparks some interesting thoughts or ideas. All thoughts are welcome.

Two of the most productive and enjoyable teams I have been on were what I’d call ‘natural agile’ teams.

One was back in the nineties and the other was earlier this year. Neither made any reference to the term agile, scrum or framework reference although the latter one did leverage from some practices that people often associate with Agile frameworks, sprint, retro and daily for example.

I have no idea how many of either team have ever looked at the agile manifesto for example and it did not matter, for me they were much more agile than many teams that had solid frameworks, training and coaches on them.

I had summerised their common natural traits as follows at a recent discussion. It’s more than a quick summary but it gives an idea that Agile can be a very natural human thing without a specified framework.

Involve the whole team, choose what works well for the team and accelerate the team forward at a pace where high quality is naturally maintained.

Review, improve and experiment regularly.

Avoid clutter and focus on the things of value.

Empathy, Trust and Agile go well together.

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ah this is kinda cool, I worked with a number of teams who are “Agile” and have yet to find any that are natural. In my last role i was scrum master and it was getting there before the role was moved to someone else (PM) and it just fell apart.
In my current role we are “Kanban” and testing is new to them…so I am forgotten about, but I have hope it will improve.

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