I’m sitting in my hotel room at the Central-Hotel Kaiserhof in Hanover. A lovely, elegant hotel, even if it sounds more imperial than it is. At least to a Viennese 😉 Behind me is a long day of workshops at a software development company. A year ago, its 19 software developers and managers (in other words, the entire staff) started a workshop series on the agile mindset with me. Nothing unusual so far. Until today.
Today showed me where a team’s agile mindset comes from: personal development. Once you work out what agile values like courage, openness or feedback mean for you and your team, you end up asking who you want to be. Methods alone won’t take you there.
How It All Started
When we first got together a year ago, I thought: What do they even want? They’re already doing a fantastic job. They ship top-notch software. Their customers are thrilled. Their development processes run smoothly. Agile working wasn’t just a buzzword for them; it was part of their DNA. The staff were happy. But they wanted more: smoother workflows, more team spirit, more pride in their work and more fun doing it. And still, something was missing, even if none of us could put a finger on it. So off we went.
Why Agile Methods Alone Are Not Enough
So how do you get going? Add more methods? Well, let’s be honest: software developers know how to develop software. And if there’s something they can’t do, they teach themselves. They were already using agile methods, and those aren’t rocket science. You’ll find them in countless books, blogs, guides and so on. No secret, fully available and ready to use. The fun starts when agile methods and practices get adapted through retrospectives and increasingly reflect the quirks of the teams and the people in them. That’s how an individual agile path emerges. It’s always a joy to watch a team get into that mode and shape its own agile processes more and more, until they sit so deep in the company’s DNA that nobody needs to call it “agile” anymore. That’s when they have the much-praised “agile mindset”. But where does it come from? AHA!
Which Values Lie Behind Agility
Agility: everyone wants it. And if you ask 10 experts to define agility, you’ll get 12 different answers. Silly, right? Not at all! Because that’s exactly the point. Behind this little word hide further agile values such as courage, feedback, curiosity, openness, etc. There’s no fully defined list for those either, but there’s a lot of overlap. And that’s where we can start, by defining the values: What does openness mean in concrete terms for each individual and for the team? What does transparency actually mean? And feedback? And courage? And then, all together: What does agility actually mean? The shared answer to these questions is as individual as the company itself!
A side note: agile methods try to “implement” these values. They’re essentially other companies’ best practices for putting their agile values into action. Whether that works for your own team or company is uncertain. If courage isn’t always the same courage, then a Daily doesn’t have to be the same Daily either. It’s great what comes out of that!
How Values Lead to Personal Development
With values, we suddenly find ourselves in territory that’s really “soft” and “personal”. And that opens up a whole new dimension: What do I actually have to think when I live these values? What do I have to believe in? Who do I have to be? What kind of team do we have to be? Reflecting on and working through these questions has nothing to do with agile methods anymore. It leads to one thing only: the personal development and growth of the people involved. Whoa! Suddenly it’s no longer about being a bit more agile, please. It’s about transformation!
“This personal development stuff won’t work for us! We have seasoned engineers and developers. And you know, our programmers are a bit … well … particular. They’re certainly not going to sit in a circle with incense sticks and play silly games.” Well, as unappreciative as that sounds, it’s what quite a few managers think. Good thing personal development has become massively more professional in recent years, backed by findings from psychology and brain research.
Personal Development for Software Developers
In today’s workshop we looked at what an agile team needs to think about itself in order to work well, and what each person believes and should believe about themselves. That didn’t just help the developers build a shared understanding of agile teamwork. They also got to know each other on a whole new level and really talked. And the most important thing was said at the end by a 25-year-old participant: “Phew, I really learned a lot about myself today. I didn’t expect that.”
And all of it without a sitting circle, incense sticks or silly games.
