Practices

One of the tenets of agile software development is continuous improvement. Not just any kind, mind you: continuous improvement by the people who do the work.

As Martin Fowler puts it, a key part of any agile practice is “the notion of thinking about what we’re doing and how we can do better, and it is the team that’s doing the work that does this, that is the central thing.”

And it’s in this spirit of continuous improvement—driven by teams—that the following article presents a simple tool that puts teams (not you and me) in charge of continuous improvement.

But first, for comparison purposes, let’s touch on another tool that’s meant to help teams improve: maturity models. In theory, it makes sense to use a maturity model.

In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not.”

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What’s the right process and what’s the right amount of it? No process is chaos. Too much of it is sclerosis.

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Routines are a good way to operate.

But let’s face it: routines are a recipe for rut.

Ergo, systems.

With the help of 10 personalities—Vincent van Gogh, Ernest Hemingway, and Admiral McRaven, just to name a few—allow me to elaborate.

Wondering what this has to do with Agile? Agile is a system and, like any system, it will fail you if you reduce it to mere routines.

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Agile teams often use points—is that a good thing? Points make things easier. They also create confusion and waste.

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For many, Agile has come to mean “user stories.” So let’s talk user stories.

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