There is a great article by Robert Holler (president and CEO of VersionOne) over at the Agile Journal website that talks about the 5 C’s of Agile Management.
In the introduction to the piece, there is one sentence that I found very interesting: “Yet individuals with the desire to change the fundamental rules of the software game and accept the empirical nature of software development are faced with numerous opportunities.”
This one sentence sums up very well two of the major realisations I have had over the past year or so of “Agile discovery”.
Firstly, in order to be successful with Agile I believe you need to allow yourself to throw away everything you knew from before and to start your thinking again, from a very basic level. I am not saying there is no place for the years of experience you already have in the software industry – of course this is highly valuable, and key to continued success. But unless you are willing to challenge all of the norms you previously worked within the confines of, I do not believe you will fully reap the benefits Agile has to offer.
Secondly, writing software (as with most things you do in life) relies on leveraging your finely tuned common sense! Understanding that requirements ALWAYS change, estimation is ALWAYS imprecise, trust ALWAYS gets tested between the various protagonists of a project (both internal and external to the development team) is key. Yet we often find ourselves looking for more ways to combat these things, more processes to mitigate the risks and address the dependencies. More buffering to “guarantee” our success. We hide from the reality that some of these things can never be managed! The word “accept” that Robert uses is pivotal – until you accept that software development is empirical in nature, you cannot possibly maximise the benefits of Agile to your team.
Robert articulates the 5 C’s as Courage, Context, Course, Cadence and Cost. As a manager in an Agile organisation, I will definitely be coming back to these 5 concepts again and again when thinking about how we can continue to improve and successfully deliver on our commitments to our business.
