A Common Misconception About Agile Methodology

I have been involved recently in Agile transformation, i went through lots of conversations, with Techy people, that have a lot of misconceptions about Agile.

Lots of people in the industry are transforming into agile, without really knowing what Agile is? They keep on telling that Agile is not a process and its a mindset , while their mindsets are still rigid ones.

The main problem about Agile is that people who implement it think only about the Process as if people were made for the process not process for the people.

The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath — Mark 2:27

So any process is made to make people’s life easier, not the opposite.

Main Goal of Agile is Delivery, the problem with the normal project management way is, that we focus on the delivery milestones (not the deliverables), payment terms, finishing the project (not the customer satisfaction).

Each one of the above make us so nervous to follow a certain plan, process, rather than delivering a really working software.

So, if you claim that you are following Agile Process, and you can’t deliver. It means that you don’t have either the mindset of delivering software nor applying agile in first place.

I interview lot of people weekly to onboard some good calibers.

I ask them the below and i get these answers:

• What Process do you follow to Deliver ?
• - Agile / Scrum
• Sounds cool , what is the process about ?
• - Ah Okay , We do standup meetings , Sprint planning and retrospectives.
• Very Cool , but what is it all about ?
• - its about being Agile

For me all the above answers are wrong. He missed the only key answer. It’s all about DELIVERY

Here comes what they say “Agile is a Mindset” , most of the people who teaches agile , the first slide of their presentation is “Agile is not a process , its a mindset “.

Sounds really cool, but actually they don’t say what a mindset is.

• What is the main thing i should focus on?
• How to implement that?
• How do i transform my mindset?

Then the next slides are talking about the growth mindset and the other one , which I don’t remember :), then done.

After the training teams gather to discuss what they learned, they start stereotyping each other, The growth mindset is mine, but actually you don’t have it, and we are done.

I will be writing several posts about how to implement Agile from a very practical perspective, my posts are just my practical experience that might not be the best scientific way .

But i will be writing what really worked for us to deliver.

Cheers ;)