Thread by @RonJeffries

I’ll put this poorly. will try to do better later, in another medium. the thing is this. faux-agile, would-be-agile, downrightfuckingfake agile are going to be all over. people are even trying to /standardize/ agile, to nail it down, to define it. /1

people are “certifying” rank agile beginners, three-day agile leaders, one-week agile whatevers.

people are pushing their scheme, framework, angle, over all the other angles.

some of the things being pushed are downright wrong, incorrect, mistaken, maybe even evil.

/2

Still, many of the ideas in there are pretty good ideas. that is, they’re half-decent words describing something that can only be experienced to be understood.

more important, to me:

@KentBeck has said he created XP to make the world safe for developers.

/3

i still care about that, and so do a lot of people. these certifications, processes, definitions, well, they do have some good ideas, and they may bring about real improvements for businesses, and for people. i hope so.

/4

but i want something more. i want those of us who care about the people inside these processes to come together, in a distributed, cooperative sort of way, and to work together to make people’s lives better. individual’s lives. team’s lives.

/5

how? i’m not sure how. we have to figure out how.

i think it’ll be more about how and why, and less about who’s an asshole and why they’re bad.

i think it’ll be about building up a somewhat coherent family of practices chosen adaptively, for reasons.

/6

i have no good examples, but here’s a candidate:

the increment. a team should ALWAYS have available a current, tested, integrated, running version of the product. the increment should improve every few days. it should be ready to use, each bit of it really working.

/7

but why? here’s where we have to help people understand the many values of the patterns we suggest.

seeing the product, “they” see that we’re working and progressing. they see what we understood of what they asked and what we missed. they learn to communicate better with us.

/8

they see what they asked for. they learn from seeing it what they should have asked for. they learn what to ask for next.

they can even use it, to deliver value to customers.

they can see that it’s time to stop polishing this and move on to that.

/9

and so on. this is just one poor example.

the idea, and i do have one, is that we here who care about some folks, might work in a distributed but increasingly coordinated way to give these people practices and understandings, to make things go better.

/10

it isn’t possible to tear down SAFe or Scrum or <you pick>. it’s not necessary. it might not even be desirable.

we here, who care about people, can work together-but-separately. we can revive the “movement” part of this thing, and help real people to improve their lives.

/11

a distributed group of people who share the values of helping people can be out there doing it.

little mammals, running among the dinosaurs. we did it before. we can do it again.

shall we? what is it? how can we come together?

/end