Agile Mindset

We love writing about, talking about and discussing agile mindset. There’s no wonder that one of the first texts translated to English (and expanded) is about our own agile mindset.

 

About Mindset

Some things have to be clearly defined to avoid misunderstandings and long arguments on the Internet over meaningless details. Let’s start with mindset. Interest for that word, according to Google Trends, has begun to climb in 2015 and continues to do so to this day.

“Mindset – a person’s way of thinking and their opinions” – Cambridge Dictionary

No wonder that so many books were written on that topic. A lot of successful people want to share the approach that made them successful. Your mindset helps you with achieving your goals and even surpassing the expectations. Because all humans are different, every book and every mindset is different as well.

Thankfully, we already created a set of beliefs and a way of thinking that seems to work in the project management area of IT. Every author describes the agile mindset in a similar way. Because we all share a common understanding of agility, right?

“Agile – used for describing ways of planning and doing work in which it is understood that making changes as they are needed is an important part of the job” – Cambridge Dictionary

We all know that agile is an umbrella term for various software management techniques. The usage of that term began with Agile Manifesto back in 2001. It wasn’t just about understanding that changes are inevitable. The key values stressed by the authors include focusing on collaboration, working (i.e. useful) software and individuals and interactions.

There’s no doubt what “agility” is in terms of software development. What’s “agile mindset” then?

 

What Is Agile Mindset?

Agile mindset is usually defined as a set of beliefs and way of thinking (and acting!) that includes: positive attitude, thirst for knowledge, team success as a goal, pragmatism and being ready to fail.

Our favorite pair of beliefs are: positive attitude combined with being ready, or even willing, to fail. They might seem like opposite ends of one stick but when you think about it, to do anything new you must have both.

Doing new things means you’re experimenting, a very “agile” thing to do. But since you’re not an expert, you’re very likely to make some mistakes or even fail a few times until you figure out how to do it. You cannot be discouraged by the failures and at the same time you have to think positive. You have to believe you’ll eventually get there.

People working using agile methods think in the same manner. There will always be next requirements, iterations and more attempts. It’s not like we celebrate failures (“fail early, fail often” is not an encouragement to fail) but we don’t treat them as tragedy. They are opportunities to learn and adapt.

It ties nicely to being pragmatic – acting in a way that’s most likely to succeed, doing only what’s truly necessary. That’s the definition of a Minimum Viable Product. Do what’s needed and what will make your clients smile but no more. Do it effectively as your client won’t care how much time you’ve spent on it.

Fixing everything with duct tape is not being pragmatic. It’s being lazy.

Speaking about clients, you can’t forget about people you are working with. There are no personal goals when you’re agile. You’re a part of the team that fails or succeeds as a whole. “I’ve done my tasks, you didn’t” is not a way to think.

Last but not least – thirst for knowledge. If you’re reading these words I’m pretty sure you have that thirst. You want to learn more about things that are useful, you want to be more efficient, wiser.

 

Agile Mindset Is Useful Everywhere

People with agile mindset tend to behave in the same way both when it comes to workplace and everything else they do – their hobbies, travels and their lives.

Every sportsman that competes has positive attitude (“I’ll run faster than the last time”, “I’ll lift more”) and is ready to fail (“it doesn’t matter that I didn’t set a new personal best this time, there will be another training session”). “There will be another chance” is a great and crucial component of the agile mindset. That attitude, or mindset, carries on to their whole lives.

It looks the same way for people working in IT who have been exposed to agility for many years. There is no “impossible” for them. They always think that when enough people can do it – they can do it. They are pragmatic but dedicated in finding solutions. Failures don’t bother them.

Being “agile” is not enough to be a perfect member of, for example, a Scrum Team. The converse is true. Without agile mindset it’s extremely hard to become a member of any even remotely agile team. Thankfully, you can work on your mindset.

 

Not Only Agile Mindset

Agile mindset results in agile practices. Of course you can notice such behavior in people who are not agile at all. But sooner or later, given enough first-hand examples, people change their beliefs. You can’t do agile things with a non-agile mindset and stay that way. Because being agile works.

We’re mostly talking about the approach to life, work and everyday issues. People with agile mindset do not complain “things happened to them”. They make things happen. And that includes taking responsibility for everything that happens and admitting that “everything that happens to me is my fault”.

If that’s our core belief then you simply can’t help yourself but play to win. You can’t merely avoid losing as this won’t make you grow. At the very best it will make you stay in one place. If you want to develop yourself and grow you have to experiment, you have to take your chances. And we know that when we do it, we sometimes fail.

“Systems over goals” is a very popular mantra for agile people. Instead of focusing on very specific goals and deadlines, we create a vision of the future and make sure that whatever we do brings us closer to that vision. Of course we will achieve some goals on the way but that’s merely a byproduct.

Add to that iterative approach, splitting big tasks into smaller ones, pragmatism and creating Minimum Viable Products and we have agile approach in a nutshell. We’re not trying to save the world, we’re not trying to make everything work in one go. We’re always “getting there” and “there” always is being more and more defined.

 

Agile Philosophy

We can treat agile mindset as a manifestation of agile philosophy. Because all that pondering on way of thinking and beliefs is nothing else but philosophical discussion. In its purest form it tries to answer the question “how to live?”

Scientific method is well-known to everyone agile. Based on our observation we create a hypothesis which we then test. We analyze the results of our experiments and update are predictions. You might call it scientific method, Deming’s cycle (PDCA) or OODA loop. It’s all about “inspecting and adapting”, not thinking we’re omniscient. It’s the reality that provides our with data.

It could be that this whole agile mindset is very simple to explain. Maybe it’s enough to highlight empiricism, self-organisation and inclination to inspect (retrospect) and adapt. It would be good to discard empty theories and focus on what really works. Let’s admit that we deal with complex domains of Cynefin framework and we can’t even dream of “good practices”. All that is left is experimenting.

Even if we model our approach after others, we’re unique and our results will differ. We need to be ready for anything, look closely for what’s happening and split our work into small enough items so that we can analyze them. Let’s be optimistic and pragmatic – aim high but have our feet on the ground.

And then, we’ll create our own agile mindset.