We Must Do Agile (Practices)
vs.
We Must Be Agile (Mindset)

• “We need a standard way to do Agile.”
• “If you’re not doing [practice], you’re not Agile!”
• “We need something specific, not philosophy.”
• “If you’re obsessing on a checklist of processes, you’re missing the point of Agile.”
• “Those stupid Agile ‘purists’ make things too hard.”

• “How can you see the practices and the mindset supporting each other?”
• “How can we learn to get the outcomes/benefits of Agile along the way together?”
• (Invite dialogue of their rationale: What is driving their emphasis of a particular practice/principle?)
• “What assumptions are we making about people that may help us choose to emphasize practices or principles? How can you test those assumptions?”

• (People begin describing how specific practices reinforce a principle.)
• “What practices help us with the problem we are trying to solve?
• “Some of these practices actually work together as part of a whole approach.”
• (Discussion of what people in the organization really expect from Agile)

Agile Works Everywhere
vs.
Agile Won’t Work Here

• “Agile works everywhere because it’s just values & principles.”
• “Your complaints are weak because you don’t know enough about Agile to see how it can work (maybe you need training!)”
• “That won’t work here because of our constraints.” (time, tech, process, doc, regulation, etc.)
• “We tried Agile before and it failed.”
• “Our management doesn’t support Agile values and principles.”

• “What would be necessary for parts of Agile to work?”
• “What are the risks of trying?”
• “What about this org needs to stay the same/change in order for us to succeed with Agile?”
• (Highlight a past troubled project that became successful.) “What assumptions did that team challenge before they succeeded? How is this debate like the ones on that project?”

• (Dialogue of the risks/fears of implementing Agile, and how to mitigate them.)
• “What parts of Agile will work here? Will they be enough to help?”
• “I like the idea of , how can we do it in a way we can support?”
• “Some things might need to change around here… How can we do that?”
• “Here’s some strengths we have in the way we currently work; how can we keep those as we try Agile?”