Why We Should Learn Everything The Way We Learned To Walk

Watch home videos of babies standing and walking for the first time and two things in particular stand out:

1) They fall over a lot. They are trying and failing constantly, which isn’t surprising considering how tricky standing up and walking can be. What is surprising is just how readily they get up again, without seeming to be at all disheartened by the experience of failing. In fact they often find it funny. They are not only unconcerned by their failures, they are entertained by them. How might we maintain this attitude to our learning later in life?

2) Their efforts are celebrated and encouraged by everyone around them. If you are lucky enough to witness a baby taking their first steps, take a moment to take your eyes off the magic happening in front of you and look at the parents, grandparents, siblings and friends who are watching. I wonder if we ever really celebrate our children’s achievements with the same amount of genuine excitement, encouragement and love as we do when we watch them take their first steps. What if we could keep replicating that level of encouragement and joint celebration throughout their lives whenever they learn something new?

Maybe babies have something to teach the rest of us. Maybe they realise more than we do the importance of taking your time, laughing at your failures and encouraging others with genuine love and excitement. Maybe, just maybe, if we learned to do everything the way we learned to walk, learning itself might not seem as painful as it sometimes seems at school. Maybe instead it would feel easy, like … well … like a walk in the park.

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Are Scrum & Agile Dead? - Mike Cohn

I’ve always said I wanted Scrum and agile to go away.
Is that happening? I don’t think a week passes without some article about their deaths appearing in my browser or email.
Within a few years of the Agile Manifesto being written, I began to say I wanted agile to go away. I didn’t mean I wanted us to stop using them. Rather, I want them to win.
I want agile to become so much the accepted approach to product development, or to teamwork in general, that we could stop talking about it.
Instead of saying “agile software development,” for example, I could just say “software development” and the assumption would be that, of course, that meant agile software development.
To some extent, we’re there.
Changes Accelerated by Agile
When Scrum emerged as the original agile framework in the mid-1990s, cross-functional teams were not common. They are now.
Software development back then was done in phases—typically an analysis phase followed by design, coding, and testing phases.
Heavy duty, pixel-perfect prototypes were common back then due to the high cost of iterating over a design. While prototypes are still used today, multiple quick prototypes are now common to help product owners and managers choose between options.
Before the advent of agile, organizations thought they could add quality to a product by testing quality in at the end. Agile has helped us see that isn’t true.
Barry Boehm’s spiral model (1986) and Tom Gilb’s evolutionary delivery (1988) had started a shift to iterative, incremental development. But that shift accelerated dramatically after the Manifesto in 2001.
(Did you know I named Mountain Goat Software after a sentence in Tom Gilb’s book?)
What I Hear about Agile Today
Recent articles and podcasts saying agile is dead are not saying we need to reverse the improvements agile initiated or accelerated.
I haven’t read anything advocating a return to waterfall development or, more accurately, the ad hoc development practices that were more common before agile.
Instead, the “agile is dead” articles more closely mimic my long-held view that we can eventually stop talking about agile teams, agile development, agile frameworks and more. They’ll just become teams, development, and frameworks.
So are agile and Scrum dead?
I don’t think so.
I think there’s still plenty of work ahead. It’s why we’re focusing more attention toward whole-team training.
Some of the agile and Scrum fatigue I sense today is analogous to what happens in the music industry. Fans who love an artist’s first few albums often sour on that artist when they’re discovered by the masses. The artist is no longer the hip, new thing and many early fans move on because of that.
I will be happy when agile wins, when we can drop it as an adjective in front of so many terms. Until then I will remain dedicated to helping teams succeed with agile,

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How To Fix The Top 3 Most Common Scrum Issues

1. Avoid starting projects with a Sprint Zero

Sprint Zero often doesn’t provide enough time for thorough planning and architectural decisions. Instead, advocate for a flexible approach. Ensure initial planning and setup extend beyond a single sprint. This way, your team can establish a solid foundation for future development without feeling rushed.

2. Ensure thorough planning and clear acceptance criteria

Starting sprints without clear acceptance criteria can lead to scope creep and missed deadlines. Before beginning any sprint, ensure a detailed agreement between developers and management. This should outline exactly what needs to be built, including all edge cases and validation rules. Clear criteria help keep the team focused and on track.

3. Avoid treating story points as hours

Converting story points into hours undermines the agile methodology by bringing back the rigidity of waterfall projects. Educate your team and management on the correct use of story points to represent relative effort and complexity, not time. This maintains the flexibility and effectiveness of the scrum process, allowing for better adaptation to changes and challenges.

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