Agile is the ability to change, not just the ability to ship.

There is one majorly overlooked aspect to agile software: The software itself. We’re always worried about the speed of implementing, not the speed of maintenance. But it is actually the speed of future maintenance that is the essence of agile technology. We simply cannot be agile unless we focus on the technology.

Implementing agile frameworks like: Scrum or Kanban can help us deliver software. But agility is not about the process itself. Agility is a state of mind. The only metric for measuring agility is how fast we can change our software. Not how fast we deliver, on-board, story points etc. Only how fast we change our software. That is our competitive advantage.

Unfortunately though, most teams get caught up in optimising only on the surface. On the superficial parts like process and burn-downs. These feel easy to manage. So we keep an eye on those metrics. Not on the ones that actually count, like how fast can the software change in future.

Agility is not only the ability to deliver in small parts – it is the ability to change direction in future as well.

But most teams make the tragic mistake of valuing “How can we make this ship faster!” over “How easy will this be to change later?”. In fact, we only seem to ask the latter question after we’ve delivered. This is where our recency bias and innate lack of ability to see longer term lets us down.

What’s been the biggest obstacle for your teams to embrace and create agility?

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Lou Bichard

Hey I'm Lou! I'm a Cloud Software Engineer From London. I created Open Up The Cloud to help people get their start and grow their careers in cloud. I edit the monthly Open Up The Cloud Newsletter which I think you'd really like. You can find me on Twitter or LinkedIn , I'm always happy to chat. When I'm not writing you can usually find me picking up heavy things and putting them down, or riding two wheels (sometimes with an engine, sometimes not).