
What is Agile?
Satisha Venkataramaiah
3rd Feb, 2020
What is Agile?
There are different
meanings for Agile in the industry based on the understanding that people may
have. It varies from mindset, methodology, process, and so on. Let us have a
look at what the dictionary says about Agile. It means "Ability to move
quickly and easily." It also means nimble.
Quickly but not easily
What are the things
that one may want to do quickly, but not easy?
- Build a business or a
product
- Losing bodyweight
Let us take an
example of losing bodyweight. Everyone wants to stay fit. What if a person is
overweight, losing weight becomes difficult and tedious too. Losing weight is
not an easy thing to do. The amount of dedication and perseverance for that
process is enormous. Many of them are unable to achieve weight loss because
they are unable to sustain their commitment towards their goal, which is losing
weight.
Weight loss as a goal has not only a positive impact on the person but also their friends,
family, colleagues, and the whole system. To achieve the goal, one needs to
change their habits and sustain it. Habits include,
- Sleeping well
- Exercising daily
- Eating healthy
- etc.
Similarly, to build
a sustainable business, one needs to create sustainable habits.
What does Agile mean for business?
It is the ability
to evolve your products quickly and continuously to fulfill customer needs.
Just like losing weight, we want to build products quickly, but it is not easy.
Just like sustainable habits in weight loss, we need things like
- Discipline in the way we
work
- We need to engage customers
regularly
On top of that,
they need to reflect on the way they build products periodically. It includes a
process within which teams operate, the structure of the team, and policies
that govern the organization. These needs improvements frequently.
The Vehicle Metaphor
Agile is a vehicle
that takes you from one place to another. Let us say you have a destination in
mind, and you want to move there from where you are. The vehicle will help you
move from where you are to where you want to be.
There are different types of vehicles based on roadways, airways, and waterways. Some of the examples of a vehicle are car, bus, train, two-wheelers, ship, boat, cruiser, waterbike, helicopter, plane, etc. A car will serve the purpose if you are driving inside a city, but if you want to travel to a mountainous area where there are no roads, a 4X4 is needed.
Similarly, if you're going to travel
across continents, you need either a ship or an airplane. The terrain or the
surface that you are traveling on will help you decide the vehicle that suits
your purpose.
Similarly, based on
the complexity of the work one is doing, they need different ways and means to
achieve Agility. There are various ways to reach Agility, some of them are
- Scrum
- Extreme Programming
Practices (XP)
- Lean
- Kanban
- etc
We might have to
choose any of these based on the type of work we do.
Agile is not a mindset, methodology, process, or framework. Its a philosophy. It's a guiding principle towards the expected behavior.