The Agile Mind-set

Before I will go in explaining the so called Agile mindset, lets set the stage a bit. Imagine yourself at a company reception and you have just met an executive, who doesn’t know anything about agile. He suddenly asks you to define what it means to have an “agile mind-set,” Would you be able to do that, before his eyes glaze over, he drains the last swallow from his glass and wanders off? Would you be able to do it even clearly enough for to stick around even for his second drink? What would you include, and how would you hit home the need for cultivating that mind-set?

Through my career as a classical Project Manager, Product Owner and Scrum Master, I’ve worked with many different teams and organisations. Bigger and smaller. I have attended a variety of meetups and conferences. Many times, I heard of the importance of the “agile mind-set.” I’ve even used the phrase myself. But when I think about defining it, in a precise and clear manner, I have been stumped. I get it, but it has always been difficult to put it into words to define it for others. That’s a problem. I’ve worked with many teams that understand the process of scrum well enough, and even get some of the agile principles, but the mind-set wasn’t there yet. This is where my Agile training and coaching often needs to be focused towards. Getting the mind-set right is what moves teams to high-performing, Bringing a team to “optimal productivity,” achieving “astonishing results” and “a team that can do anything.”

 To some extent, it seems that the agile mind-set should simply be: “The set of attitudes and beliefs supporting an agile work environment, so that teams can become high-performing.” That might be technically right, but far from sufficient. It is too vague to provide a map of how to get to that state, or to simply assess the current status and determine targets for improvement. The elevator pitch of the agile mind-set can’t just be “the set of attitudes supporting an agile work environment.” There needs to be more meat to it, especially if this executive doesn’t really understand agile. Otherwise, I’ll just leave him or her scratching her head, and wondering what value the agile coach, or agile in general, brings to the company.

I have sometimes consulted at companies making a transition to agile; many people in all layers of these organisations wonder if it is just jargon, the next buzzword of the day, or games and gimmicks. I have therefore wanted to work out a quick way to share the main themes of agile what’s the elevator pitch for an agile mind-set?

 I propose the following for a definition of the Agile Mindset:

“An agile mind-set is ones set of attitudes supporting an agile working environment. These attitudes include respect, collaboration, improvement and learning cycles, pride in ownership, focus on delivering value, and the willingness and ability to adapt to change. This mind-set is necessary to form and cultivate high-performing teams, who in turn deliver value for their customers, beyond their wildest dreams.”

Now we have established the elevator pitch and peaked the interest of our executive, let’s drill a bit further down. A mind-set is defined as a set of assumptions, methods, or notations held by groups of people that is so established that it creates a powerful incentive within these people to continue to adopt or accept prior behaviours, choices, or tools.  In English this means, it is a way of thinking about things that those in a group share or have in common to the point that it becomes a way of life.

For me there are several characteristics I believe make up the agile mind-set:

• Positive attitude

• Thirst for knowledge

• Goal of team success

• Pragmatism

• Willingness to fail

To me, one of the most important towards having an agile mind-set is "There is no failure, only feedback." It's about taking everything as lessons, adjusting actions according to the feedback, and proceeding toward desired outcomes, resulting in continuous improvement. This does not mean that nothing matters and the same mistakes can me made over and over again. It is much more about learning from your mistakes.

The ideal is for everyone to have what the team decides is its collective agile mind-set, but that all starts with the individual. I have worked with some great people who I think embody this mind-set. They attack their work with a positive attitude, providing suggestions to overcome obstacles. They ask questions to understand what is in the best interests of the business, often coming up with innovative solutions as they experiment. They have realistic and practical attitudes focused on helping the team succeed.

When looking for people to be part of my agile teams, when I get the chance these are the mind-sets I look for. It is difficult to change people’s intrinsic personalities and ways of thinking, so it is important to get the right selection of people for your team. Let’s no dive a bit deeper into the values itself.

Positive Attitude

There are always challenges on projects; people are human and make mistakes, and everything is not always going to go well. What is most important is how the team members deal with these situations.

As issues are identified, they need to be dealt with in a timely manner with a positive attitude. In most cases something that may look negative can be turned into an opportunity for improvement. I expect my team to recognise problems—or, even better, potential risks—quantify them, and come up with suggestions for solutions.

For people new to agile, self-management is often difficult. This is where keeping a positive attitude is so important. Some of the things they try may not always work, but they should not give up. It is easy to become downhearted, but instead, team members should keep in mind that they have learned something.

 Thirst for Knowledge

Agile is about learning and adapting. Your goal should be to gain as much information possible in order to deliver a quality product. You should not make assumptions that what you are doing is best for the client. With the fast pace of business requirements and new technologies seemingly appearing every day, industry professionals need to keep track of changes and keep their knowledge current.

This is particularly true for agile professionals, who often are challenged to think outside the box to get tasks done within the tight timeframes of an iteration. Participation in meet-up groups and reading technical articles are good sources of new ideas.

A person with an inquisitive mind asks questions to help the team gain a common understanding of user stories. They are the people who adapt best to the use of experience-based techniques such as exploratory testing, where you start with a simple plan, execute tests, learn about the product, and then make informed decisions about what to explore next. They do not rely on lots of documents; if they do not understand something, they find the right person to give them the answer.

A good technique for gaining knowledge is the “five Ws”: asking who, what, when, where, and why. When you ask a question people may not give the real answer at first they will give you the symptoms of the problem, and it can take a number of probing questions to understand the underlying issue.

Testing is now the responsibility of the whole agile team, so everyone needs to be eager to gain knowledge about the product in order to improve quality.

Goal of Team Success

Agile is about the success of the team, not individual success or heroic behaviour. It is more important for the team to succeed than for the individual to have completed her tasks.

A good example of this is when team members are working on user stories of varying priorities and realize that they are not going to be able to complete a higher value story by the end of the iteration. Those who were working on lower value stories will swarm together and offer to help to complete the higher value story, even if they do not have the exact skills to complete the tasks left.

Being prepared to move outside of your comfort zone in order to help on a particular project for the overall good of the team is a valuable trait. Likewise, it is important for team members to be willing to train others in areas where they may not be confident. If there is a culture of finger-pointing, people are less likely to volunteer to work on an important task if they are not an expert in that area.

Taking the time to coach others or walk through the user story design with those who are less familiar with the coding in that function is a sign of a good team member. This shares knowledge and lessens key person dependencies, plus the whole team having a common understanding of what the story involves leads to more accurate estimates and planning for sustainable commitment.

Pragmatism

Quality is an important facet of agile. However, everyone may have a different view of what “quality” means. It is critical that the team understands what is important to the business and then deals with things sensibly and realistically in a way based on practical rather than theoretical considerations.

Instead of making excuses, team members need to provide options. Don’t say it can’t be done; explain what can be done.

You can’t force change on people. Instead, show them how the future might be and help them participate in creating it. The team needs to be willing to help each other to succeed on the higher priority items, even if it means you will not complete your individual task. Often, if team members see someone “walking the walk,” they understand that it would be beneficial for them to do the same.

When faced with an impossible problem, identify the real constraints. Ask yourself: Does it have to be done this way? Does it have to be done at all? Once you start breaking a problem down, it can seem easier to resolve.

If there is a defect, it doesn’t really matter whether it was your fault or someone else’s—it is still your problem, and it still needs to be fixed. While you are in that piece of the code it is often quicker to just fix it rather than document or discuss it. Be pragmatic about the greater good of the team and the product.

This is often where I think common sense comes into play (although it seems to not be that common). For example, do not spend hours compiling a status report when what your customer simply wants to know is whether the project is on track and a simple explanation if it isn’t. Find out what your customers really want instead of assuming and potentially wasting time, even if it has always been done that way in the past.

Willingness to Fail

Some people say that the best way to learn is to fail at something. I am not sure I agree with this totally. I want people in my team to have done as much research or questioning as possible beforehand and to ask for help from someone with more knowledge in that area to guide them so that they fail less.

Having said that, not everything is going to work well all the time. If it is a choice between having a go with the possibility of failure and not having a go at all, then I want them to feel comfortable to try. While I want my teams to challenge themselves without the fear of reprisal if they fail, there are some important lessons:

• Learn from this experience and, given a similar situation, do not make the same choice leading to failure

• Understand that it did not work in this situation but it may in others, so you have a new technique to add to your toolkit

• Feel empowered to talk about this failure so that others may learn from it

• Do not hide the failure; be open with your team

Innovation often comes from trying things that you may not have thought of carrying out during your normal tasks. For example, my team was using a mandated configuration for a tool that was just not working for them. They decided to change some of the workflow, trying different configurations, which eventually saved them considerable time entering data in a more logical flow. Don’t be afraid to question the norm if something is not working as well as it could.

 Continuous Improvement

My take on the agile mind-set is that it should include the quest to learn (even when you fail) and leveraging what you learn to continuously improve on what you do.

The agile mind-set is an attitude that equates failure and problems with opportunities for learning and invaluable feedback. In other words, it’s a belief that we can all grow stronger over time if you put in effort to increase your knowledge and support the team, and the organisational culture gives you the space to do it. Though there are undoubtedly many definitions of an agile mind-set, these are all characteristics that would be good for any agile team member to have.

If by now our executive is still around, you did a great job in explaining the agile mind-set and you explained the value of the an Agile Mindset very well.