alt="Photo depicts that blinders to help people focus in team rooms."/>
Figure 1.1: Blinders to help people focus in “team rooms”
Source: (Photo from Japan Trends:)
www.japantrends.com/wear-space-panasonic-wearable-concentration/ )
Are frequent “stopping by” discussions disruptive? For some people, yes. According to a study at George Mason University, being interrupted for only 60 seconds while concentrating can completely wipe one's short-term memory.30
Perhaps do not advise your team to just “stop by” each other's desk at any time. Perhaps people should have an “I'm thinking” sign on their desk, indicating that they do not want to be disturbed.
What about all the Agile ceremonies? Many developers think it is too much.31 Perhaps instead of assuming that the team needs those, ask! According to an article in Doist.com ,
“This trend toward near-constant communication means that the average knowledge worker must organize their workday around multiple meetings, with the time in between spent doing their work half-distractedly with one eye on email and Slack.”32
Talk to teams. Find out how they feel that they work best. Do not assume. Do not blindly follow someone else's methods.
Now What?
We can see that while there are some really powerful and important ideas behind the Agile movement, things are not quite right. What should we do?
Agile 2 is not intended to be a new set of ideas. The ideas of Agile 2 are all well-established, but they are not Agile doctrine. Many members of the Agile community have been using these ideas on an individual basis but usually describe these as implied nuances, or “bringing in ideas from other domains.” These ideas pertain to leadership, to effective collaboration, to empowering people to work in a way that is best for them individually, and to applying context and judgment instead of just adopting an extreme practice. Agile 2 is about bringing these nuances explicitly into the Agile idea set and making them part of the Agile envelope.
In the next chapter, we will take a more comprehensive look at some problems of Agile to establish a better understanding of what areas of Agile need improvement. In later chapters, we will then look at models for effective leadership, collaboration, product design, transformation, continuous delivery, and other ideas that are part of Agile 2, and we will conclude with examples of some specific problem domains through an Agile 2 lens.
Notes
1 1. www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-BOSpxYJ9M
2 2. ronjeffries.com/articles/018-01ff/abandon-1/
3 3. www.forbes.com/sites/cognitiveworld/2019/08/23/the-end-of-agile/
4 4. developers.slashdot.org/story/19/08/24/1748246/is-agile-becoming-less-and-less-relevant
5 5. goremotely.net/blog/agile-adoption/
6 6. www.extremeprogramming.org/
7 7. www.oreilly.com/library/view/making-software/9780596808310/ch17s01.html
8 8. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28software_development%29#History
9 9. www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-dev
10 10. www.agilealliance.org/glossary/mob-programming/
11 11. www.fastcompany.com/3044389/a-first-look-at-facebooks-new-mothership-designed-by-frank-gehry
12 12. The larger racquets were not welcomed by many tennis enthusiasts, because the larger racquets encouraged sloppy strokes, and they also produced a faster serve, shifting the focus of the game to one's serve.
13 13. explore.digital.ai/state-of-agile/6th-annual-state-of-agile-report
14 14. www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_y2pNj0zZg&feature=youtu.be
15 15. www.reddit.com/r/devops/comments/i4cbwu/i_hate_scrum/
16 16. www.slideshare.net/jcasal1/20120419-agile-businessconferencepptx, slide 11.
17 17. psyche.co/ideas/introverts-are-excluded-unfairly-in-an-extraverts-world
18 18. www.infoq.com/news/2013/02/Introverted-Intuitive-Logical/
19 19. ir.lib.uwo.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1005&context=electricalpub
