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“There is No End State When Transitioning to Agile” (Mike Cohn, Succeeding with Agile)

As usual, a good article from Mike Cohn to start off my work week.

This reminds me of an article I read earlier, about process improvement at Toyota (I can’t find the link, but if I do, I’ll come back and add it to this post). In short, they described the view of “process” at Toyota as fairly binary: either the process is being actively improved, or it’s degrading. There’s no concept of a steady-state, no concept of “done”.

From Mike’s article:

So, a transition to agile cannot be a process that “articulates and defines the entire change process required to bridge the gap between ‘as is’ and ‘to be’ and creates tactical plans,” as I read in a traditional change management book recently. Creating such a plan would require leaping two impossible hurdles: first, knowing exactly where we’ll want to end up; and second, knowing exactly the steps to get there.

There’s a ton of utility in this half-paragraph - in Agile, in business, in life. Most importantly, though, is the recognition that like Toyota, no matter how good your transition is, no matter how refined your process, you’re never done.

This is hard, and tiring. Accepting that you’re never done also means accepting that there’s always work to be done, always more to do, always more improvement. If your goal is to coach a team until they’re Agile, then realizing that you’ll never be done means that you have to redefine your personal success criteria.

How can you succeed personally if you have to accept that you’ll never be done?

One of my friends and I have been talking about this very thing, albeit in a more circumspect manner. How can you feel comfortable walking away from a job, a project, a team without feeling like a failure? How can you say “I’m done” without sacrificing your own sense of commitment to the team, without feeling like you’ve failed in your project?

Agile is tough. Continuous improvement is tough.

No matter the circumstances, you can always improve. You can always start improving with yourself. You can always start improving today.

Kent Beck’s quote has always resonated with me, especially as I’ve transitioned through so many things over the past few years. It’s setting the bar higher, always looking to do more, do better. But, accepting that the bar can always be set higher means figuring out when to stop, when to catch your breath.

I don’t have a lot of answers today; mostly, Mike and Kent’s quotes leave me thinking and rolling thoughts around in my head. But, a quote from one of the books I keep on my bedside table has been stuck in my head as something of a counter-point:

The tiger is the same way. He conforms to every situation that comes. If he spots prey and is not ready to hunt, he will let it go. But he has not failed to act. He has knowingly let the prey escape, and this is much different from someone who loses a situation through slow reflexes or inability. When the tiger wants his prey, he pounces upon it without any thought or hesitation. There are no morals, no guilt, no psychological problems, no ideologies to interfere with the purity of his action. This undiminished grace in action is called nonaction.

No. 34: Engagement, Deng Ming-Dao, 365 Tao

A tiger sits and waits, and knows when he needs to act, when he needs to let a situation pass him by. When it comes to knowing that, I’m still Shu. I’ve got a long way to go before I’m ready to move to the next step of wisdom there, I think.