Agile & Productivity Strategies

The same as buying a baseball cap doesn’t make you a baseball player.

One of the biggest misconceptions when we think about migrating to agile is to expect faster delivery. Faster delivery of the same size of projects that we are used to have.

Agile is not for faster. It is for better.

The expectation that we need to have from any Agile framework is to become more efficient while delivering more value.

We need to focus on improving our STRATEGIES and not just adding more frequent DEADLINES to a roadmap.

We get what we ask for.

Be cautious about this. If we ask for fast results, for sure, your team will focus on completing the work but on its quality.

By the time we receive tasks to fix, they focus on the timeline, not on the value that they are delivering, nor on the efficiency of how they are working.

The faster results will come later. When our focus is on quality and not on quantity, then we become critical reactors, we learn how to adapt, and when to adjust, and we do it better than others.

Trust your experts.

One of the pain points when migrating to Agile is to delegate the decision-making. This is a second misconception, Agile promotes open discussions so that whatever decision is made is fully analyzed from all perspectives, not only business owners but also technical experts.

What you are sharing is not the decision-making role, but the confidence, in the safe environment that they need to express their suggestions although those might not be the ones you wanted to hear ideally.

Agile is an idea, a mindset of how we work, not a tool we use to work with.

Having a tool and naming the ceremonies by the book does not mean we are working Agile.

You can actually manage a waterfall project with Jira. The tool itself will let you do whatever workflow configuration that you have in mind. Agile or not.

Spreading the wrong expectations could potentially result in getting the wrong outcomes.

Agile is not scrum. Scrum is Agile. It’s one of many Agile frameworks.

Another misconception is to adopt scrum everywhere in the Company when each framework offers you specific attributes to cover specific needs.

I could go forever if we start talking about Agile frameworks, but if you are thinking of migrating to Agile, your team, or your entire Company. Here are a couple of starters for your research.

Scrum is an agile framework that timeboxes deliveries.

The team will have to deliver value in every cycle. To do that, they must know what value means from project and business perspectives so we all identify when we are deviating our attention to not valuable things.

On any failed attempt, we can react, adapt, and adjust for the next cycle. That is the beauty of scrum. But we all, not only technicals, will have to learn from that experience. That is the hard part of scrum. We ALL are an active part of this effort.

Kanban is also an agile framework but focuses on action impacts, timelessness.

That does not mean that we do not plan, nor that we do not have regular checkpoints.

In Kanban, Biz and Tech leads are on top of the decision-making action mode. Activities are clear and specific in scope and ready to be implemented.

Deadlines are dynamic based on changing priorities and impact reactions rather than static time cadences and predictable deliveries.

Whatever framework you choose, ensure it has the qualities you need and that the right mindset is spread.

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Do you want to know more about habits?/ ¿Quieres saber más sobre hábitos?

Get to know us!/ Conócenos!