In this post we will explore Agile values, principles, practices, and patterns

• Explain the importance of Agile
• Describe the five Agile values
• Describe the three Agile principles
• Describe the six core Agile practices
• Describe the three Agile patterns

After you complete this article, you would be able to apply Agile values, principles, and practices in your work environment or personal projects

Intro

Being agile is about the development mindset, which means a way of thinking or having certain attitude about something. The act of migrating from being agile to doing agile is about integrating these values and principles into how the work is done—through the practices.

Agile ideas

Agile manifest

Agile values

Agile values consist of trust, empathy, respect, openness, and courage

Agile Principles

Clarity of work

Ways to act on this principle

• Begin by defining the problem that your team is trying to solve. Too often people start coming up with solutions before they fully understand the problem.

• Next, determine the user outcome. Once you have defined the problem, it’s much easier to achieve clarity about the user outcome that you envision.

• Then, always keep this high-level outcome in sight in everything you do. This will ensure you are delivering real user value, value that improves the overall user experience.

Iteration and learning

Ways to act on this principle

• Start by doing and trying small pieces of work.

• Listen and learn from feedback received.

• Iterate by making adjustments based on feedback received. You might have to make some big adjustments to get yourself back on track. (By the way, another phrase for “getting back on track” is “course correct.”) That’s ok. Course correct as necessary so that you can continually improve on your user experience.

Self directed teams

Ways to act on this principle

• Build a small team to do the work.

• Select individuals for the team that have the right set of skills to do the work.

• Empower teams to make decisions and be accountable to find their own paths. Leaders only need to prioritize and provide clarity and then stay out of the way.

Agile Practices

Social contract

A social contract is a simple agreement that defines how a group will work together “at its best.” It clarifies how everyone in a group should behave and interact. As an individual, you can go off and do your own thing. But in a team, you need to follow the guidelines the team has set up. And if someone doesn’t follow the guidelines, the team addresses it. One way to think of a social contract is as “a box of trust” because a social contract provides clear expectations and trust emerges from clear expectations.

How to create social contract ?

- Schedule a meeting with a facilitator who will make sure all perspectives 
  are heard.

- At the meeting, the facilitator should ask questions to get people thinking:
  What do we value? What’s important? What would make this team powerful? What 
  can we count on from one another? Think about both positive and negative 
  experiences you have had when working with groups or teams.

- During a silent brainstorming session of about 15-20 minutes, team members 
  individually write ideas on sticky notes (one idea per sticky note) and stick 
  them on the wall for all to see.

- Once the brainstorming session is complete, the team groups the sticky notes 
  with similar ideas. Next, the team labels each group of sticky notes, and these 
  labels become the elements of the social contract.

- Create the social contract by writing clear statements from the grouped elements. 
  Start the contract with the phrase, “I expect ...”.

Mood marbles

Mood marbles are a simple tool that help you gauge the mood of a group of people, such as classmates, family members, a volunteer group, or a business team. Using a jar and marbles, you can evaluate how your team is feeling—good or bad—each day and over a period of time.

Green marbles represent good moods. Red marbles represent bad moods. If there are more red marbles than green ones, this is a clue that there might be an issue with the team and that it needs to be addressed. Issues with the team can impact quality of the work and deadlines.

Wall of work

A wall of work is a simple, visual way to track progress. You can create one for any set of tasks that you’re working on as an individual—though they are particularly useful for groups of people—so that everyone can see the status of all tasks, even the ones that others are doing. A wall of work ensures all the tasks are accounted for and clearly shows who is responsible for completing them. It also shows bottlenecks in the work; so, as a team, you can adjust the work flow and get things done!

A wall of work is organized using columns. At its simplest, a wall of work is a board with three columns: to do, in progress, and done. For example, a family can use a wall of work to get chores done.

Stand up

Stand-up meetings are short status meetings, usually done daily. In a stand-up, everyone briefly answers three questions, typically variations of:

What have you completed since the last stand-up?

What will you complete by the next stand-up?

What are the blockers keeping you from successfully completing your tasks? Stand-ups are a quick way for each member of the team to give and get status of the progression of work.

This helps identify issues or blockers to getting the work done. Separate meetings can then be scheduled to discuss and resolve these issues and blockers.

Retrospective

Retrospect means to look back in thought or to reflect. A retrospective meeting is a means for a team to look back at their performance and think about and identify ways in which they could do things better. It gives team members the chance to share their observations and ideas for team improvement. The outcome of the retrospective is the team committing to two or three improvement actions. What’s more, any family, academic group, or team can do it and benefit from this practice.

A retrospective starts by asking everyone in the group to answer three questions:

• what went well ?
• what didn’t go well ?
• whats puzzling us ?

Showcase

A showcase is a meeting where the team presents the work completed to the stakeholders and other interested parties and obtains feedback for moving forward. This is more than just a demo! It’s a real chance for the team to listen and learn from the feedback provided by the stakeholders and other interested parties. The feedback provides guidance to the team about:

• What to prioritize
• What to temporarily set aside
• What to remove from the backlog (the open list of things still to do)

Showcases help all those involved—stakeholders, product owners, team members, and other interested parties—to get on the same page and to have the same vision for moving forward.

Showcases should always involve:

• Reviewing the work completed
• Discussing what is coming next
• Deciding if there are any adjustments needed

Final Summary

• Agile practices bring Agile values and principles to life.

• Practices are rituals or habits, a usual or customary way of doing something.

• There are many Agile practices. Some of the core practices are as follows:

• A social contract is a simple agreement that defines how a group will work together “at its best.”

• Mood marbles are a way to evaluate the mood of a team using a jar of red and green marbles.

• A wall of work is a visual way to track progress of work completed.

• Stand-up meetings are short status meetings, usually done daily, where everyone briefly answers three questions:

  • What have you completed since the last stand-up?
  • What will you complete by the next stand-up?
  • What are the blockers keeping you from successfully completing your tasks?

• A retrospective is a meeting in which the team has the opportunity to reflect on their performance and look for ways to improve.

• A showcase is a meeting in which the team has the opportunity to receive feedback from stakeholders on completed work and to explore next steps.

• Shuhari is Japanese for describing the learning journey to mastery in martial arts and can be applied to Agile. You start with following the rule as a novice, then progress to adjusting the rules as you gain experience, to eventually creating the rules when you have achieved mastery. Remember, anyone can do these practices. They can be used in any kind of work. The key is to practice them until they become habit. Once they are a habit, you have changed your behavior. And once you change your behavior, you can change the culture.

Agile Patterns

• Business leaders can use the Agile strategy and governance pattern for developing the direction that the company will follow. For example, a tech company might focus its direction on being the top cloud provider.

• A business can use the Agile operations pattern for the continuous day-to-day work that involves single repeatable processes. An example of a repeatable process is getting the payroll out each week to employees.

• Company leaders can use the Agile program pattern for project work that has a definite start and definite end. An example of project work is implementing a new tool for employees to use.

The three Agile patterns that organizations use to get work done are:

• Strategy and governance - helps leaders develop the direction in which the company will go
• Operations - continuous, repeatable, and day-to-day work.
• Programs - is for project work that has a definite start and end.

All three patterns follow the same five steps or phases:

• Mobilize
• Understand
• Explore and strategize
• Build, test, and implement
• Manage and evolve

Agile and Design Thinking

What sets the design thinking methodology apart is the focus on user outcomes—not just any outcomes, but user outcomes. This means that to design well, you understand the user, develop empathy for that user, and understand what that user is trying to accomplish when using your design. Design thinking is all about the user.