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On this last Friday of 2010, I thought I’d try to get a quick “One Hit Wonder” in before the horns toot and the bubbles flow. And maybe these New Year traditions are apt images for my topic today. I’ve been thinking about what we do for the New Year and what we do for Agile. We like to scoop up information to help us figure out what we can best do next. On New Year’s Eve we sometimes call that “resolutions” for the next year. Ugh. Not my style. Rather, I’d like to think about intentions. So bear with me as I reveal my style of “inspect and adapt” for my personal New Year:
Accentuating what is positive and whole is best
Years ago, a friend of mine had told me about how she prefers to reflect on the last year. She has a way she moves into the New Year, answer three questions:
- What will I let go of that has drained me or perhaps has caused me to feel guilt or shame?
- What will I choose to continue to do, those things that energize and delight me?
- What new things am I prepared to invite into my life to help me to continue to let go and grow?
I like this metaphor for Agile teams as they retrospect from iteration to iteration, or from release to release, or even year to year. I like paying attention to the positive.
- What has not worked for us, caused us angst or distress whether in our process or our technology, that we are prepared to let go of?
- What do we choose to continue to embrace about our work as we move forward?
- And, what new practices or agreements are we prepared to invite into our team or with our stakeholders that will help us to continue to grow and improve?
Start simply: where you are
So for me, I start today, here, now. I could think about how I have seen my life from day to day. I can watch how my life has unfurled from week to week or month to month. Using appreciative inquiry, I can take what has brought me the greatest delight and pride and then look at what was happening when that occurred. And then I can choose to replicate those circumstances, sort of like what our guest blogger Lee Devin refers to as “Planning to Get Lucky”.
For Agile teams, we can apply this philosophy each time we demo functionality to our customer, whether at timebox intervals or as each new function or minimally marketable feature is completed. We’ve learned. These demos, often on a Friday afternoon, lead us to inspect and adapt. These demos also feed the team and the customer. We all learn. AND, we do this through the pride of completing working functionality.
I believe in the humanity and delight of this form of retrospection. Do you see why I shirk New Year’s resolutions? Instead, I look for the accomplishments that have helped me grow and move forward. Agile teams, through their demos and reviews invite the same.
And now for our one hit wonder!
I am thinking of a song that accentuates the positive, invites us to let go of what may be drudgery and to plan instead to get lucky. Oh the metaphors!
Thanks in advance to Wikipedia for helping me fill in the tale of our one hit wonder. The band (yes, not a solo act this time) started with a husband-wife team who then added another male/female contingent. The album that held their #1 hit song actually did quite well on the charts. And this was 1976 when you could buy songs as single 45 records (no, single MP3s were not yet available ; -). The band received two Grammy Awards that year, “Best Arrangement (voices)” and “Best New Artist”. And yet two subsequent album outings not only produced no new hits; the husband and wife team were soon divorced. Oh the tragedy of it all after such success from a song that you can still hum today.
So what is our One Hit Wonder this last Friday of 2010? We’ve got Starland Vocal Band and their great tune with which to say, “Happy New Year, dear readers!”
Jean Tabaka is a snow shoveler, crash skier, author and Agile Fellow at Rally Software Development. You can follow Jean on Twitter at @jeantabaka
