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| The Music Man (1962 film) |
Some Agile coaches come in promising that if you just trust in the old Agile Methodology everything will magically happen. I’ve seen this happen twice with the same coach at large companies. He’d been coaching since the earlier days of Agile, when it was more appropriate method for small start-ups or small teams trying to get something quick out the door. Over the past decade Agile has become a common mantra of big organizations who are trying to solve the time-to-market issues of their old approach which is usually associated with the Waterfall Method. Because of the pains and complaint they get about time-to-market, they’re easily sold on the idea that if you just trust it and don’t look outside of your 2 week sprints, once you’ve done it long enough you’ll end up with a wonderful magical new system that just works. Both times, what the coach had sold the organization failed and the teams realized a need for a comprehensive approach. Something akin to knowing that you’re taking a road trip to somewhere and estimating how long you might drive each day; without falling into the trap of either a) planning every mile down to the minute or b) taking a Kerouac-esque trip to… we’ll know when we get there.
This rage against Waterfall reminds me of The Think System, from the old 50’s musical The Music Man. A bunch of townspeople are so eager to hear that their children are musical geniuses that they believe a talentless con-man who tells them that if their kids just “think the notes really hard” they’ll be able to play them. Only to leave town with the money before the first concert. This reminds me of those Agile coaches who are more interested in “coaching” you than in your result. Not saying that all Agile coaches are bad, some are quite excellent, but the truth is in whether they are more interested in getting you to practice the method and trust them than worrying about the fact that you’re actually building something specific with critical real-world applications that will make or break your strategy. Just like if you hire an agency to design your product for you; they’ll potentially be more interested in impressing you and getting that quick win, than integrating Design Thinking into your entire organization. If you're not starting out with something akin to Systems Thinking (see Wikipedia), you probably don't have a good idea of where you want to go. And unless you're Kerouac, that's probably not a good thing.
So, if you’re trying to build a $100 million system or if you’d like to achieve a great User Experience using this pure Agile concept, I’m sure you will perhaps get there after about 10,000 sprints. But that goes against the whole reason for adopting the Agile Methodology in the first place. The point is, getting something out the door for a quick win can’t be your main goal, unless you're boot-strapping the next big thing in a shed near Silicon Valley. Speed is critically important, but unless you have an idea of the complete eco-system, including your User Experience Strategy you are bound to keep fixing problems instead of innovating and building towards a greater whole. And your product will undoubtedly suffer.
If you know what you're trying to achieve (in the big picture) and what your priorities are (in context), you're going to be be able to plan and deliver better than either of the other options.
