Let's (re)build Agile Community

Let’s (re)build Agile Community

By Bachan Anand / Filed under Uncategorized / April 2nd, 2010

Do you believe we in the Agile community (who has seen organization and individuals transformed through Agile adoption) can collaborate better and grow better as a community ?

I believe we should be focusing more on building the Agile community as a whole and focus less on ::

Scrum Alliance and how to find fault with them and thinking that forming another Scrum organization will fix the challenges.
Trying to figure out whether Kanban is better than Scrum or the other way around and what is the next wave.
Management does not like AGILE and will not get it.
Why is Agile better than Waterfall.

All these discussion and steps are powerful if we are coming from a point of view of abundance and WIN- WIN , and if the discussions are focused on improving , not for telling I am better than the other.

So what does WIN – WIN and abundance looks like from my perspective.

Don’t just rely of Scrum Alliance / Scrum.org or something else to grow Agile and overcome challenges, take responsibility and do what you can to support each other.
Have a forum where we give people true choice instead of being hung up that one framework / methodology is better than the other , educate ourselves about the XP, Scrum , Kanban etc and Agile Principles and provide organizations with an honest assessment and provide a road map for their Agile Adoption taking the practices that will most benefit each organization.
Reflect on why management has a hard time with Agile and see how we can support it and educate us of management’s concern and educate management on Agile.
Get involved and spread Agile/ Scrum outside of Software, Non Profits, churches , learn from it and incorporate that into Software.
Share success stories and provide more information so that people can learn from it and emulate the success.
Have more discussion around managements involvement and how Management can support an Agile Adoption.
Form master mind groups at the leadership level so that we can work on the common challenges as a team beyond the barrier of frameworks and methodologies.
Forming Coaching circles so that we work as a team .

I am sure some of you may be doing this and much more already . I welcome all of you to join hands and share those information, get other people involved .

Let ‘s all grow together , there is enough place for Scrum . Kanban , XP and much more to succeed in this world.Let’s come from a point of abundance and not operate from a point of view of scarcity.

Here is another article I found by Mark Levison – Certification may be evil, but we do lets stop fighting and create some value

If anyone of you is interested in participating please visit these online communities.

This is a Google Group formed during Scrum Gathering – Let’s Grow the Community

A Google Group with the objective of bringing Scrum practitioners from different industries together - Scrum Collective

Google Group for Agile Developers Group working to build a road map of the skills that are valuable to a software developer working in an Agile style

Linked In Group for Scrum For Non Profits

Linked In Group for Coaching Circles

Linked In Group for Purpose Behind Agile for Management

Please provide your views on how we can build the community . I would love for like minded individuals to get together and start contributing. Let’s link existing communities that are already working in this direction.

Comments

D. André Dhondt says:

April 14, 2010 at 6:54 am

First thing I’ll do is ask the Agile Skills Project list if there are people on the other lists that are willing to cross-post / cross-pollinate for important developments…

Bachan Anand says:

April 14, 2010 at 5:49 am

Thanks Andre, yes it would be great to have people from these different communities come together and share ideas and lessons learned. It will be great if you have any thoughts in making this happen.

D. André Dhondt says:

April 14, 2010 at 1:22 am

Bachan–thanks for putting together this list of community builders. Next we need some people who provide cross-linking between those groups, to share the good ideas and advance their causes…

Lyssa Adkins says:

April 11, 2010 at 2:08 pm

Bravo, Bachan! Yes, of course, people are coming together as George suggests and one person will never be able to know about everting going on. And, in other places in the Scrum/agile world, people are tearing one another apart. I commend you on calling for a mind-set of abundance.

Mark Kennaley says:

April 6, 2010 at 9:53 am

Hello Bachan,

I have recently written a book about the issue you raise. It is titled SDLC 3.0: Beyond a Tacit Understanding of Agile. Reviews are rolling in and are very positive. Read the forward by Scott Ambler to get a sense of the feedback.

My perspective for some time as been similar to what you present, although I believe that the community you mention needs to go beyond the “Agile” community to embrace valuable contributions of the Unified Process community, and the Lean community. I explain why in my book, as well as on my blog http://www.fourth-medium.com/wordpress .

And if you look at recent work by David West at Forrester Research, it would suggest that wholesale methods are becoming less and the less the norm. What I call for is a “Complex Adaptive System of Patterns/Practices”, dropping the branding and rampant competitive differientiation going on in our industry.

Regards,

Mark

George Dinwiddie says:

April 6, 2010 at 7:08 am

Bachan, it sounds to me as if you don’t think people are already trying to build such community. I see it every day.

Some of the wording here makes it sound very Scrum-centric. Perhaps you need to get out into the larger Agile world to see more of the conversations that span various Agile and Lean flavors.

Bachan Anand says:

April 6, 2010 at 9:26 am

Thanks George. I would love to get involved and know more the collaboration that is happening . Again I didn’t mean that people are not promoting and adapting Agile values and principles. What I meant was , it would be great if people who work closely in these communities Lean, Scrum, Kanban etc would collaborate together of a greater good of make a difference in work place.

CONSCIRES AGILE PRACTICES