Let’s say one day you wake up and think, ‘I want to be healthier.’ You decide, ‘I’ll start eating an apple every day.’
You stick to this routine for months while continuing all your old habits, such as staying up late, eating junk food, drinking alcohol, smoking, and so on.
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 a few practices alone does not yield results.
Simply performing practices like stand-ups and retrospectives is not enough. Old habits, such as a lack of psychological safety, accountability, or ownership, poor collaboration, avoiding questions, not saying ‘no,’ disrespecting time, and dishonesty, do not disappear just by performing some Agile events.
A company or team only gets the most out of being Agile when its mindset is deeply rooted in the Agile principles stated in the Agile Manifesto.
They include 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.