In an Agile environment everyone needs to understand that ‘being Agile’ is about taking the framework of tools, processes and methodologies and applying them to your specific organizational needs. At Disney where I was part of a group that moved into Agile, our first foray into Agile Discovery and Planning was, well an epic fail. We we didn’t produce any work product that would allow us to enter a Sprint.  We developed a lot of ‘stuff’ but as it was at is it turned out, not the ‘right’ stuff.

But from that initial failure we evaluated what did work (group Discovery) and what didn’t (PO not taking ownership of story development).  From there we were able to begin to understand the ‘what’ that was important and over the course of around six months we developed a pretty solid delivery model that allowed the organization to feel confident in our delivery abilities.

Now, what worked for us at Disney more than likely won’t work for your organization.  The only way to find out is to try something, anything and see how it goes.

If you want to be a virtuosos at any musical instrument you need to practice, hour upon hour of repetition.  Along this long road of preparation you will find some efforts easy, others hard.  You will fail at mastering some part of a technique that just seems so difficult, you feel you will never get past that point and then you will try something else and BAM, you got it.

From our failures comes learning, the type of learning that becomes part of your DNA. Your mind takes over and can put thinking in the background as you play your instrument.

To be great in Agile, your organization has to change its very DNA.  If you want to succeed, you have to fail and you have to fail often and quickly.

You hear that a lot in Agile when we are talking about our test automation, let it fail early and often. We know that fixing issues while still in development is significantly cheaper than fixing them in Production.

Make sure you instill in your organization, management support for succeeding to fail.

Baseball players get into the Hall of Fame for succeeding to fail at a 70% clip, if you bat over .300 for your career you have a good chance of making it to Cooperstown.

As your teams embark on their Agile journey, keep these concepts in mind to ensure you are driving towards success:

• Self-organization – We want this to happen and for teams to be empowered, because they know more than anyone, what the real pain points are to their daily work.  Let them try something to see if it works no matter how crazy you may think it sounds.
• Retrospectives – Make sure that a team that is self organized and is empowered to try new approaches is having regular post Sprint retrospectives.  This continuous inspect and adapt cycle ensures that we are always evaluating what works and what doesn’t.

In the end if things aren’t working - TRY SOMETHING. What do you have to lose?