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On February 11-13, 2001, at The Lodge at Snowbird ski resort, overlooking the Wasatch mountains of Utah, seventeen independent thinkers, self-described as “The Agile Alliance,” met to talk, ski, relax, and try to find common ground.
Representatives included those with backgrounds in #ExtremeProgramming, #Scrum, DSDM, Adaptive Software Development, Crystal, Feature-Driven Development, Pragmatic Programming, and others sympathetic to the need for an alternative to documentation heavy software development processes.
What emerged was the Agile ‘Software Development’ Manifesto, a set of values (seen in this image) and the “12 principles of Agile Software”.
I have written several articles discussing each of the principles in detail, examining their validity in today’s world. The intent of this article is to discuss the value of “Responding to Change over Following a Plan.” It is the last in a series of 5 values articles covering the values, including a common fallacy and some detail and practices I encourage you to take in adopting each value and an agile mindset.
Consider reading all the articles here.
The Values of AgileManifesto.org
We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it.
Through this work we have come to value:
· Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
· Working software over comprehensive documentation
· Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
· Responding to change over following a plan
That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.
Responding to Change over Following a Plan
Plans are a wonderful beginning, but they rarely can be followed exactly, nor deliver what we initially sought to accomplish. Often, the team, leadership, and/or organization create impediments through reprioritization, BAU activities, competing managerial priorities, or some sort of fire drill that has the team scrambling to overcome challenges brought on by unforeseen events.
Additionally, feedback, being extremely important and coming from our stakeholders, customers, and team on a regular basis, may require a change in design, functionality, performance, or something else. However, with every change comes sacrifice, in the form of lost productivity due to spent hours, task switching, and/or the inability for the team to say no to activities that compete directly against the planned work that was not negotiated away.
These activities, and many others, impede the team’s ability to follow their plan, instead requiring them to quickly respond to the changes placed upon them, whether inline with the agile values and principles, or competing against them.
While agile teams must be able to respond to change quickly, this misunderstood value commonly is interpreted as if agile teams should be able to constantly shift their work while still accomplishing their plan with high quality and delivered value. This is why I find this value can be the most challenging as all stakeholders misconstrue this value as if agility means we should be able to constantly change without impacts. Change does not come without consequence, and while we must remain flexible in how we do our work, we cannot continuously make changes while expecting teams to deliver as much or more value as initially planned.
Instead, we must create an environment where our teams are protected. Leaders must become servants and look for every opportunity to remove impediments and ensure activities that could impede progress are minimized or at the very least communicated and planned accordingly. We must create a workspace where every reprioritization effort is discussed and negotiated with the expectation that teams cannot complete everything, and every change will slow value delivery. This is not the team’s fault, nor anyone else’s. Changes, good or bad, internally, or externally requested, provide an opportunity for everyone to learn and grow from the change. Was it avoidable? Was it due to a change in the market? How can we forecast better next time? Is it something we could have planned for? If so, what did we miss and how can we account for these things in the future?
Responding to change is valuable in that it encourages us to feel empowered to shift our work quickly to suit the most valuable needs of our customers. While we should continue to plan, and always look to follow that plan, we must regularly learn from those things that impede our abilities and improve our planning. Only then can we embody the true meaning of this value.
