No Agile method gives you permission to close your ears and eyes

As you might guess, the image of this blog is created by AI, in my case Stable Diffusion. I struggled with it because there are not a lot of pictures with green clouds. So, every picture with a green cloud had a green shade over the whole picture. Because of that the green cloud did not look unnatural, like I wanted. So, what did I do in the end? I created a picture with a clear sky. Then with an inpaint function, I added a green cloud. This is not the way Stable Diffusion is taught. But that does not mean I was misusing the tool. There might be a better way, there might not be. But what I did is allowed in the tool. And this way I achieved my goal.

So what is the link with an Agile method? Every method is taught in a certain way. What you learn is not only the rules of a method but it is most of the time combined with the best practices of a method. You are not taught how to adapt the method to solve the problem for your company or your team. That cannot be done in any other way, there are just too many variants in teams and companies.

To be a bit more blunt, here are a few examples of things I saw go wrong very often. Having a planning session does not automatically mean your planning is agreed upon by the developers. Having a retrospective does not automatically mean your team is growing. Having a standup every day does not mean you know all the impediments. In all these situations it only means that these things should happen, not that they do happen. Your team might not be experienced enough in the
Scrum method yet. People might feel judged when they speak. There might be pressure outside of the team that has an unwanted effect on the outcome. Your Scrum Master or Product Owner might not have the right skills yet.

Does that mean you should automatically assume this can happen? No, it doesn’t. It is not a problem if you start with the default Agile method implementation. Just keep your eyes and ears open. Is the created planning for the most part achieved? Is the team performing more work or working in a better way? Is something stuck, even when no impediments are mentioned? And never stop listening to people who mention problems, even if those problems shouldn’t occur in the Agile method you implemented.

Also, do not solve these problems by ignoring the Agile methods in these situations. Get an expert, do a Google search, or read a book. While your problem may not be happening in most companies, it is most likely happening in far more companies. For most problems, there are solutions known within the Agile method.

In the end, the best way to use an Agile method is to understand what you can achieve with the method. And extend that with knowing what tools and methods you can use outside of that method, that can help you solve the problems of your team or your company. Tools and methods that do not go against the method but which complement the method in a way that suits you.

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