Learning Agile

Chapter 10. The Agile Coach

You’ve learned about Scrum, XP, Lean, and Kanban. You know what they have in common, and understand what they achieve. If you work with other people to build software, then you’ve spotted at least a few things—some practices, ideas, attitude changes—that will help your team.

OK! Now, go ahead and do it. Make your team go agile. Right now!

That doesn’t seem quite realistic yet, does it? There’s a big difference between reading about values, principles, mindsets, and practices in a book and actually changing the way that a team works. 

Some teams are able to take a book on Scrum or XP, adopt the practices, and immediately see great results. After reading the first nine chapters of this book, you should recognize why: those teams already have a mindset that’s compatible with the values and principles of the Agile manifesto and the methodology. To a compatible team like that, adopting agile feels easy because the individual people on the team don’t have to change the way that they think about their work. So if you already have a mindset that’s compatible with the agile methodology you’re trying to adopt, you’re much more likely to have a successful adoption.

But what if you don’t already have a mindset that works for Scrum, XP, or another agile methodology? What if you’re working in an environment where it’s difficult to succeed with the agile values? What if individual contributions on your team are rewarded far more than team effort? What if mistakes ...