Foreword

Real World Agility provides us with a clear and simple Baedeker to the sometimes strange and often baffling world of Agile.

It will be particularly useful to anyone coming into the world of Agile, Scrum, Kanban, and Lean who is finding it a disconcerting and even baffling experience. There is a lot of weird terminology that is not taught in business schools, at least not yet. There are in-jokes about things that you are supposed to know but somehow don’t. You are finding some things being done in ways that are the opposite of what you have seen in other organizations. You may have heard that Agile is not for the faint of heart, and yes, you are finding that some aspects of Agile are indeed difficult. You are sensing that some parts of Agile don’t fit your own organization. Can you be sure that dedication and persistence pay off? How do you find your way?

None of this would matter if you had a wise and reliable mentor who was at your side at every moment and always ready to answer every possibly dumb question with patience and insight. But you don’t have that mentor. But what, you might ask, if that mentor existed and answered your questions in the form of a book? What if the book was written in an informal, lively, down-to-earth idiom—as one real world practitioner to another?

Meet Real World Agility, a book that gives you the answers that a wise mentor would have given you, if you had one. Drawing on his long and deep experience in the real world of Agile, Daniel Gullo shares with us his insights on the principal questions that everyone coming to the world of Agile will inevitably encounter.

There are answers to informational questions about the nature of the Agile landscape. What exactly is Agile really about? How do you make sense of all the different flavors of Agile? What’s the meaning of certification? Is it useful?

It tackles big controversial questions. Can Agile scale? What are we to make of SAFe? What do you do about an organizational culture that is unsupportive of Agile?

It makes sense of bothersome little issues that every newcomer will come across. Why, for instance, all the in-jokes about pigs and chickens?

It tackles some of the trickier operational matters. How do you break down a backlog into sprints? Why must each increment of code be valuable to the user? How long should sprints be? What are story points all about? What’s the fuss about the meaning of “done”?

It offers suggestions on broader management issues. How do you mesh Agile teams with the existing management hierarchy? How does the ScrumMaster relate to the product owner or project manager? Can a ScrumMaster be a member of the team? Why are there so many meetings in Scrum?

It tells the story of notable Agile journeys by a wide variety of individuals. In this catalog of narratives, readers are sure to find analogies to their own situation and its issues and, more important, discover how those issues were resolved.

It contains a handy glossary of the most common Agile terms and a reading list of books for those who want to dig deeper into the world of Agile.

The book covers a huge terrain. It offers insights on controversial issues where other authors might hesitate to tread. Not every expert will agree with every opinion that the book offers, but everyone will agree that the opinions offered here are a useful anchor point for meaningful conversation.

The book gives us frank advice on what’s important and what’s not. It tells us what’s crucial to pay attention to, not just nice to have—but in fact the whole ball game.

There is no longer any need to go on struggling your way through Agile alone. The subject can be understood. It is the future. This book will help show you why.

—Stephen Denning
Author of The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management