Agile for the Rest of Us

What does it mean to be agile?

A friend of mine who has a lot of experience delivering software products based on Agile Development recently asked me about the training course he's developed. I thought it was a perfect setting to explain what the implications of Agile are to the rest of the organization.  If IT is doing things totally different, then we probably should be changing our expectations as well.

The first of several posts appeared on LinkedIN earlier.  The meat of the matter are five behaviors and their impact.

1. Business Value Focus - we need to focus on the what, not the how
2. Dynamic and Adaptive - we won't have a Gantt Chart on the wall, we'll be moving things around
3. Collaboration and Feedback - we can't just attend the kickoff meeting; we're embedded resources
4. Transparency - that wall in #2 is public for all to see
5. Continuous Improvement - we're not shooting for the moon in one step, but taking small steps to learn from

Each or subsequent posts will expand on the five changes above.
If you're interested, Tom Abshire can be found over on LinkedIn or on the AgileFluent site.