Let’s say one day you get up and say “I want to be more healthy”. You decide that I will start having apples everyday. You do it everyday for months keeping all your old habits of sleeping late, eating junk food, drinking alcohol,smoking etc.
Do you think having all these habits and eating an apple a day will keep doctor away?
Definitely NO.
And after a while you might even get disappointed and frustrated, and you will decide to stop eating apples claiming that “a healthy lifestyle simply doesn’t work for you” or “eating apples is not really helping you”.
Following few practices does not yield results. Old habits like no accountability/ownership, less collaboration, not asking questions, not saying NO, no respect for time, not being honest and doing practices like stand-up & retrospectives will not help.
A company or team only gets the most out of being Agile, when its mindset is based on the Agile principles stated in the agile manifesto such as continuous learning at all levels in the organization, business and IT working closely together, delivering the highest business value first, welcoming change, and creating an environment where motivated individuals can be creative and self-directing.
Though old habits die seldom but this article is inspirational. Any idea how can I signup to your trainings.
Thanks Gaurav. You are right killing old habits is very tough and hence it takes very long time for complete agile transformation. I conduct workshops only for Corporates currently and not public workshops. You can initiate this discussion in your company for the same, so that they can get all right people into this class. If you are fine you can introduce me to someone who can take a decision on this.
I like the tagline and associated issues of using only specific Agile practices. Nice one!
Thanks Shrikant.