There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
— Julius Caesar, Act 4, Scene 3, Lines 218 – 224
Shakespeare must have had Agile in mind when he wrote these lines! For, they fit the context of Agile beautifully. He must have certainly read PM Power’s book The Five Tantras of Enterprise Agility.
Agile is about Opportunity
This is what the first Tantra of Enterprise Agility talks of: Customer Focus. Agile development teams must be aware of and aligned with their customer’s business. Their customer, with their help, must be able to take advantage of every opportunity in the market, before their competition can. There is only a small window of time and if the customer is not able to launch their new products in the high tide of opportunity, they will be stuck in the shallows. Agile teams must lead customers to their fortune.
Agile is about coming together
The second Tantra talks about self-organisation. The army of developers must self-organise to beat the enemy – competitors of their customers; like Brutus’s army ready to take on Octavian’s and Antony’s forces.
Agile is about Leadership
The third Tantra talks of Transformational Leadership. Brutus is pointing out to Cassius (and through him to his army) the goal. It is then for them together to go into battle against their enemies. A true transformational leader will set the goal with his team and then together march towards it: towards providing the customer with continuous value.
Agile is about taking chances
Experiment and Learn: that is the fourth Tantra. Unless you take chances and experiment when opportunities present themselves – that is, put out the ship when the tide is high – your customer will never be able to forge ahead and be the number one, ahead of their competitors.
Agile is about eliminating wastes
The fifth Tantra is Lean Thinking. Eliminating wastes of both omission and commission is important. If the ship is not launched when the tide is high, if the customer is not able to grab an opportunity when it presents itself, it is a waste of omission. These need to be eliminated.
So as Brutus says, when you are afloat on a full sea, you must take the current when it serves, or lose your ventures.
2 Responses
Velocity of each individual iteration will be a different figure. There are many ways velocity gets impacted. Apart from planned absence (planned leave, training etc.) and holidays, there could be unplanned absences caused by illness, personal emergency etc. which impact velocity. User stories that do not get completed in an iteration get moved to next iteration. This brings down the velocity of the iteration where the story was started and bumps up the velocity of the iteration where it got completed. This being the situation, good practice is to take an average of last five or six iterations as the velocity of the team. Team stability is another factor that impacts velocity. Teams that have higher churn will see higher volatility in velocity. Other factors such as change in technology, adoption of new tools, increase in automation, will also impact velocity either positively or negatively! However, if team is stable and has reached “performing stage” steady rise in average velocity will be seen over a period of time till any of the factors mentioned above comes into play and impacts it.
Thanks Milind, fully agree with your comment.
Finally, irrespective of the increasing trend in velocity, there is improvement for sure. This cannot be missed, if observed. One of the intent of my blog is to encourage this observation, by taking a mildly provocative stand.