Starting Agile: Finding Your Path

Many teams attempt to "become Agile" by adopting Agile practices. When this produces some improvements, they declare victory, print the t-shirts and order the cake. Agile achievement unlocked! What's next? Increased efficiency is not trivial, but this approach fails to recognize the potential of Agile. True agility requires something more fundamental than simply replacing one set of rigid inefficient practices with new ones--even if they happen to be less wasteful. Better practices alone do not an Agile team make. To be Agile, teams must go further. They must learn to deal with change as a core competency, and that means creating a base that goes deeper than Agile practices. The Agile principles are what provide this foundation. The principles provide the why below the practices and give teams a bedrock that allows the practices to adapt to change.