Change, Agility, Leaderschip & Coaching

About the Soul of Agile

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by

Wouter Tinbergen
in , , ,

I read this article: Where is the Agile I was promised ?
It’s about the soul of agile and it expresses my feelings quite well.

It’s message is: Agile is not a list of artifacts, but agile is a mindset. Or call it a Soul, which you, as a person working in a team should follow over it’s artifacts.

According to  this soul consists of several subjects:

  1. Agile Values
    Communication, Simplicity, Courage, Feedback, Trust, Collaboration, Respect, Focus, Commitment
  2. Servant leadership.
    Leader who develops people, removes impediments, provides autonomy, engages & motivates
  3. Autonomy of individuals
    Teams have a say in decision making, they are not dependent on managers for everything
  4. Performing Roles as prescribed
    We act as Scrum Master and not the Manager, we act as a Product Owner and not a messenger, we act as a team and not individuals
  5. System thinking
    Optimization of subsystems of the systems and thinking of the system as a whole

I wondered: Do I give enough attention to the Soul of Agile? I could do better, for example at nr4: I should not let me be tricked into (micro)managing and instead fullfill the pure role of scrummaster.

So, go on, read the article and explore some subjects in depth.

P.S. The definition of ‘the body of agile’ in the introduction is not ok imho. It just describes Scrum. Which is just one way to express the agile soul. You could as well use XP or Kanban, of Scrumban or whatever embodies your agile soul the best!