CHAPTER 1

Agile Mindset and Principles

Agile is a way of thinking and a collaborative approach used by individuals, self-organizing and cross-functional teams, and organizations. Agile assists people in evolving solutions through the division of tasks into short phases of work and frequent reassessment and adaptation of plans. Agile thinking is based upon a set of values, frameworks, principles, and tools for managing and delivering results. An agile mindset involves developing appropriate attitudes, principles, and thinking processes that support an agile work environment. Overall, being agile emphasizes adjustments, incremental delivery, collaboration, and continual learning.

This chapter explores five foundation questions, including: What are agile principles and values? What are agile ethical principles? What is agile project management (APM)? What are key agile concepts? Why is agile important? The answers to these questions establish a starting point for becoming agile.

Q1. What Are Agile Principles and Values?

Practitioners and researchers have been discussing agile processes for more than 25 years. A major conceptual advance, The Manifesto for Agile Software Development, was published in 2001 by 17 leaders in the field of software development. They identified four principles based upon their experiences. The manifesto states “we have come to value:

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more, cf., agilemanifesto.org.”

An agile principle is a fundamental proposition that supports agile behavior and reasoning. The Agile Alliance (agilealliance.org) identifies 12 principles and guiding practices that support teams in implementing and executing with agility. The principles are based on the Agile Manifesto. Agile practitioners should try to understand and then internalize the following principles:

Project-Management.com identifies 10 key principles of agile software development. The project management key principles are: (1) active user involvement is imperative; (2) the team must be empowered to make decisions; (3) requirements evolve but the timescale is fixed; (4) capture requirements at a high level; (5) develop small, incremental releases and iterate; (6) focus on frequent delivery of products; (7) complete each feature before moving on to the next; (8) apply the 80/20 rule; (9) testing is integrated throughout the project lifecycle—test early and often; and (10) a collaborative and cooperative approach between all stakeholders is essential. There is some overlap of this list with the 12 Agile Alliance principles.

In brief, our summarized list of key agile attitudes and principles includes: (1) collaboration, (2) continuous improvement, (3) delivering value, (4) fact-based decision making, (5) pride in ownership, (6) respect for others and for self, and (7) a willingness to adapt and change.

There are multiple lists of agile principles, we see a commonality here. One should not memorize these principles, rather one should try to understand them, so that they guide thinking and behavior.

Q2. What Are Agile Ethical Principles?

Ethics is guided by ideas about virtue, duty, and consequences. Ethics is about who you want to be and how you want to act both as an individual and as part of a team. Ethical principles should guide how we behave and the decisions we make.

Agile is founded upon two statements of principles that provide ethical guidelines to agile professionals. In one of the agile processes, Scrum, five ethical values are emphasized: (1) keep commitments, (2) courage, (3) focus, (4) openness, and (5) respect. These values must be understood and lived. Examining these values helps internalize them; let us see what each means:

Five general ethical principles should also guide managers, professionals, and staff in agile decision making, agile processes, and agile behavior. These principles are:

These principles and values are often translated into codes of ethics and professional conduct. For example, the Project Management Institute (PMI) Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct describes the expectations practitioners have for themselves and others. The code specifies the basic obligation of honesty and fairness. It requires that practitioners demonstrate a commitment to honesty, ethical conduct, and compliance with laws and regulations. It carries the obligation to comply with organizational and professional policies and laws. The values that the global project management community define as most important are fairness, honesty, respect, and responsibility.

Ethical agile practices can reduce and even mitigate unintended consequences. The benefits of agile do not result solely from the adoption of a set of practices; rather, if agile and agility are to deliver value, then a positive system of principles and duties must also be adopted and followed, cf., Sliger (2009). To become agile, we must strive to engage in business conduct that is ethical and responsible. Also, we must act deliberately, and do what is right. In general, we must act consistently and ethically.

Q3. What Is Agile Project Management?

Applying agile values and principles when managing a project is commonly identified as Agile Project Management (APM). APM is an iterative, value-driven approach to delivering a project. Sanchez, Bonjour, Micaëlli, and Monticolo (2019) refer to this development as the agilification of project management.

APM is a process that involves breaking down a project into smaller, more manageable chunks to better deliver a successful project and create value. APM emphasizes methods and processes that prioritize action and feedback over planning and control (Schmitz 2018). Managing a project based upon agile principles involves continual collaboration with stakeholders and continuous improvement and iteration at every stage.

The role of a manager is to deploy, direct, and coordinate human resources, financial resources, technological resources, and other resources efficiently and effectively. Managing a project involves applying knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to guide project activities that are intended to meet project requirements. The primary challenge of a project manager is to achieve all project goals within the given constraints. Managing most projects involves finding a balance between the three constraints of scope, cost, and time to achieve a high-quality outcome. Scope refers to what is accomplished.

APM has increased in popularity as managers try to overcome the many complex issues associated with more traditional project management approaches. In comparison to bureaucratic approaches, APM seems simple and intuitive.

According to the Project Management Institute (PMI), more than 70 percent of organizations have incorporated an agile approach, and agile projects are 28 percent more successful than traditional projects, cf., Conrad (2019). PMI (2017) reports “an actively engaged executive sponsor is the top driver of projects meeting their original goals and business intent.” In the QuickStart Business Productivity Blog, Ali (2018) identifies five companies that successfully implemented agile Scrum project management, including 3M, IBM, ANZ, Google, and Spotify. IBM identified improvements in metrics such as on-time delivery, defect backlog, customer satisfaction, maintenance, and innovation, cf., Brown (2013).

APM emphasizes work organized in small chunks delivered incrementally by a collaborative, self-organizing team. Multiple teams may work on the same larger scope project. For some bureaucratic organizations and certain types of high-risk innovation projects, a pure APM approach may not be viable. A more pragmatic solution may require a balance between the stability offered by a traditional planning approach and the flexibility associated with an agile approach. Adoption of a hybrid project management approach may be an appropriate solution for high-risk projects.

Q4. What Are Key Agile Concepts?

Learning and understanding agile concepts is a starting point to becoming agile and collaborative as a project team member, team lead, coach, or manager. An agile journey requires both an understanding of concepts and practice coupled with coaching or mentoring. The words we use and how we use them is important. Agile vocabulary captures our intentions and helps us communicate effectively. Table 1.1 presents a list and explanation of six broad agile concepts.

We will further explain the brief definitions in Table 1.1 throughout the book. Agile means more than being “able to move quickly and easily” or “the ability to think and understand quickly,” but those attributes are important. Agile is responsive to incomplete or changing requirements, provides short development cycles and rapid feedback, and facilitates more active customer involvement. An agile organization is a structure with decentralized decision making that is socially flat, team-oriented, and consensus-based.

The five hallmarks of an agile organization include: (1) a network of teams within (2) a people-centered culture that (3) operates in rapid learning and fast decision cycles, which are (4) enabled by technology, and a (5) common purpose that co-creates value for all stakeholders (Aghina, et al. 2018). Agile organizations are enabled by self-organization, a management principle that teams autonomously organize their work. Self-organization happens within boundaries and in terms of given goals. Teams choose how best to accomplish their work, rather than receiving detailed direction from others outside the team.

Table 1.1 Key agile concepts

A project vision statement is an ideal view of desired outcomes for the client that result from successful project completion. A project vision statement is a vivid description of the project result intended to inspire the project stakeholders to initiate the project and to guide the project team. A project vision answers the what and why questions of a project, and it provides a starting point for inspiring action.

These six and many other agile concepts are discussed and explained in more detail in later chapters. The glossary contains 36 important terms with definitions that should be reviewed and mastered.

Q5. Why Is Agile Important?

Agile hyperbole continues to mislead, and some see agile as a solution to every problem (cf., Ambroziewicz 2017; Mandir 2018). Agile started as an approach to software development, an alternative to the traditional software development lifecycle (SDLC) framework, and it has become much more. Agile is not a magic bullet to solve every problem, rather agile is a mindset, a way of thinking, a framework for action taking, a goal, and a journey to more contingent processes, higher performance, and potentially value creation. There are multiple agile methods, for example, Scrum, Kanban, and APM serve different purposes. Agile is a powerful concept that means an individual, team, or organization has developed capabilities of responding rapidly to change and of creating more dynamic business processes. Agile processes are especially helpful in managing the changing requirements of projects.

The Manifesto for Agile Software Development (Beck, et al. 2001) does not discard the structures and processes of prior management methods, rather agile is a way to do some tasks better and faster. An agile process is not appropriate for every project. For example, strategic decision making about irreversible alternatives should not be made using an agile process, rather the decision process should be systematic, slow, and deliberate and based upon merit, data, objective judgment, and awareness of possible consequences, cf., Ambroziewicz 2017; Bezos 2017. In many cases, however, the processes for reversible decisions should be more agile, higher velocity, and even opportunistic.

According to Rigby, Sutherland, and Takeuchi (2016), agile methodologies “involve new values, principles, practices, and benefits and are a radical alternative to command-and-control-style management— are spreading across a broad range of industries and functions and even into the C-suite.” Despite the heightened interest, many people misunderstand or fail to understand becoming agile and applying agile methods and principles. In general, agile is about better communication, adapting to changing situations quickly, and rapid innovation. Agile methods are especially good at engaging and communicating with people and often result in greater involvement of stakeholders in activities and projects.

As noted previously, one way to explain agile is with a dance metaphor. Dance is art and science. Individuals, teams, and organizations should perform and practice a wide variety of dances in appropriate contexts. For example, agile Scrum is perhaps like a fast tango for small projects. The point is we need to learn many dance steps and styles, including tap dancing, the twist, and hip-hop if we want to be agile. A simple version of slow dancing, the twostep waltz, is often taught to elementary school students because it is much easier to learn than other more energetic dance styles. Agile processes have various rhythms, rituals, and styles. We do not want to always do the waltz.

Today, businesses need to be more agile in executing digital transformation strategies. Teams need to be more agile in software and systems development. People need to be more agile in adapting and responding to change. Agile means one can move quickly and easily and can think and understand quickly. Some synonyms for agile we like include deft, dexterous, graceful, and nimble.

The noun agility is sometimes used in business strategy, new product, and marketing discussions. Sambamurthy, et al. (2003) define agility as a firm’s “ability to detect opportunities for innovation and seize those competitive market opportunities by assembling requisite assets, knowledge, and relationships with speed and surprise” (p. 245). Managers often strive to increase agility or to become more agile. One must ask if becoming agile and increasing agility is important or just another buzzword or fad of the year or decade for improving performance. Becoming more agile and increasing agility both personally and professionally are important goals for most individuals, teams, and organizations; in our opinion, agile it is not a passing fad.

From our perspective, business agility refers to an enterprise’s ability to respond to the ongoing technology and social disruption by using processes that better meet market and customer demands. The goal of agile and agility must be to create value. McKinsey (2020) asserts “Becoming an agile organization allows a company to increase speed of execution.” Agile has become much more than a set of management practices relevant to software development.

In a CIO opinion article, Ronan (2016), a retired IT Executive at Fidelity Investments, identified five reasons based upon his experiences of why organizations should be using agile. His reasons include: (1) decisions are made more quickly; (2) change is recognized as inevitable and is embraced; (3) younger employees really like the collaborative, fast-paced agile environment; (4) customer satisfaction is much higher for agile projects versus waterfall projects; and (5) agile projects had significantly fewer defects in the production environment. This list of reasons may have limited validity across organizations, but they provide arguments to test.

Becoming more agile is important for individuals, teams, and organizations for three major reasons: (1) the requirements for faster, more responsive execution require a reduction in bureaucratic processes; 2) changing technology environments reward more customer-focused processes; and (3) rapid internal collaboration and communication that is coordinated using technology is both possible and a requirement for successful individuals, teams, and organizations. Agile processes meet new needs created by digital disruption. Agility helps us change and adapt to dynamic environments.

As we noted in the introduction, we all need to learn new dances, and we need to dance faster much of the time. We need to be able to change dances in an elegant and seamless way, depending upon the need. Agile teams do not necessarily translate into business agility, rather creating strategic business agility requires agile teams for many tasks that have a customer-centric focus, cf., Almeida (2018). Becoming agile is part of a long-term strategy for digital transformation. It is important to combine changes in the business model with digital transformation to create an agile work environment. To succeed, we all need to remember that any good dancer who is dancing with a partner must dance in harmony, shared joy, and synchronicity.

Conclusion and Summary

In this introductory chapter, we have addressed a variety of related topics. Based upon our analysis, Figure 1.1 highlights six key agile principles and values, these include: (1) individual initiative and pride in ownership, (2) collaboration, (3) interaction with stakeholders, (4) self-organizing teams making fact-based decisions, (5) embracing simplicity and delivering value, and (6) continuous improvement.

Figure 1.1 Key agile principles

In general, APM is a people-first approach where work is organized in small chunks delivered incrementally by a collaborative, self-organizing team. The values that the global project management community define as most important are fairness, honesty, respect, and responsibility. If we seek to be agile, it is our duty to be fair and honest while showing respect for others and taking responsibility for our own actions.

Agile is a mindset. To become agile, one learns a way of thinking and a framework for action taking. The goal of becoming agile and of adopting more contingent processes is higher performance and potentially greater value creation.

An agile person is responsive to incomplete or changing requirements, seeks rapid feedback, and facilitates active customer involvement. Agility is essential because there is a need for faster, more responsive processes, changing technology environments reward more customer-focused processes, and rapid collaboration and communication are required for success.

Becoming agile can be disruptive and even uncomfortable. Current practices and attitudes will change. Learning is good and knowing a mix of processes and practicing them add variety and interest. How you think about work is the most important change associated with agile and agility. Enjoy your work and do good.

¹ agilenutshell.com