Realagile

Every software development team on this planet wants to –

• Deliver high quality output
• Be predictable
• Handle ambiguity (obviously, no body calls that out)
• Consistently do above 3.

Now put all of the above in a highly agile environment where you deal with –

• Existing customers breathing down your neck
• New features that must be rolled out “yesterday” when they are going to be defined “tomorrow”
• Strategic initiatives to double your revenue stream

While your team tries to juggle with the norm above, invariably there’s that P0 stuff that comes your way like a gush of wind threatening to dislodge your team’s house of cards. It catches you completely off guard. It threatens your team’s clockwork efficiency. It throws their sprint planning exercises off track. “Grooming? What grooming?”, you say. You slice stories while writing code while design takes care of its own sweet self. You couple QA with demos and push the baby out. With repeated prioritization and re-prioritization it becomes increasingly difficult to measure and track velocities. And when all the ash and dust settles, you realize it was your burn down charts that were set to flame.

While some of the above may sound like exaggeration, most of us do go through this some time or the other. This is what I would term as “Realagile” (Real Agile). Just like realpolitik, this is based on “practical and material factors and considerations, rather than ideological notions or moralistic or ethical premises”. It is not good. It is not even bad. It is just real.

In my experience, agile development model provides a very good framework to identify and define different pieces of the puzzle. It lets you organize and run your teams in a certain way. It makes you strive for customer gratification by faster roll outs. Most importantly, it forces you to brainstorm and plan better.

Most businesses, however, are not built around any single model. In fact, great businesses are built with far more subjective ideas like passion. Their growth is tied to impact they create. It is critical that we not only adapt to but also appreciate the rapidly changing macro landscape in which businesses are run today. It would need real gurus to propose a development model that can be defined as a function of passion and impact. But till that time, let us not be constrained by just definitions. Let us not be obsessed with our plans. While it is critical to have definitions and plans in place, let us be guided more by our instincts.