You might already be “doing agile” – you just don’t know it yet

A common, but surprising reaction I hear when delivering agile training is that some of the content already feels familiar. Maybe one of their team draws on some agile practices even if they’ve never used the term. More likely, they emphasise with some of the mindsets I’ve shared and they can see them in their day-to-day work. Perhaps their role requires regular experimentation and they have a good rhythm of testing embedded in their work.

This is great and I encourage it. Agile is about mindsets, and if people can already start to see them in practice then they have a foundation to build on. People like being told what they are good at already! They will feel much warmer to agile and more open to trying new things if they can recognise ways in which they are already doing something similar.

It’s also helpful to acknowledge that agile is a spectrum, not a binary. You don’t have to do all the things to “count” as being agile. It’s much more approachable if you just start with one or two small things, and it’s even better if those strengthen things the team is already interested in or trying to put into practice.

Of course, there’s more to it

Agile practices reinforce each other. Labelling everything as agile feeds into some of the ways agile goes wrong, setting some fundamentally wrong expectations about what it actually is. But I think there are two complementary mindsets that are sufficient in themselves to enable genuine agile.

First, learning and adapting as you go.

This is often what people are getting at with experimentation. But doing a lot of A/B tests isn’t sufficient. You should be prepared to do things differently based on your tests, to work in short enough cycles that you can take what you have learnt from your experimentation and use that to change what you do in future. This means shifting from “oh what could we test next time?”, to really thinking through what your assumptions are and deciding what you’ll do if they are proved or disproved.

You also need to be learning from both your audience and from yourselves. A regular rhythm of reflection is fundamental to agile, which is why I’m forever recommending retros. If you really have an open, safe space to think about how you are working together and what you want to change, you will naturally get better. This takes time, but it’s like an investment with compound interest.

Of course, creating an open, safe space can be a big ask. And that’s why my other essential mindset is a willingness to share power. It has to be ok for each member of the team to speak up, share their opinions and disagree if they feel like it. And the more a team feel empowered to do that, to make decisions about things that affect them, the more you will be able to learn and improve and use the wisdom of the entire group.

There’s lots of ways for leaders to share power. Ask for feedback, make some decisions collectively, give people real ownership over the things they are closest to. Combined with regular reflection, it’s my MVP for approaching work in an agile way.

Can you see signs of agile mindsets in your team, even if you don’t formally follow agile?