How can you tell if you are agile?
Faq
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Last Updated: Wed 25 Oct 2023 11:15
Question
How can you tell if you are agile?
Answer
There is no hard test that can determine your capacity for agility. Here are some questions that may provoke you to think about how you do things within the context of your organization:
- Are teams delivering working software to at least some subset of real users every iteration (including the first) and gathering feedback? (alt: every two weeks)
- Is there a product charter that lays out the mission and strategic goals? Do all members of the team understand both, and are they able to see how their work contributes to both?
- Is feedback from users turned into concrete work items for sprint teams on timelines shorter than one month?
- Are teams empowered to change the requirements based on user feedback?
- Are teams empowered to change their process based on what they learn?
- Is the full ecosystem of your project agile? (Agile programming teams followed by linear, bureaucratic deployment is a failure.)
More questions are in the Detecting Agile BS guide from the US Department of Defense.
Recommended Content
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Detecting Agile BS (Guide)The purpose of this document is to provide guidance to DoD program executives and acquisition professionals on how to detect software projects that are really using agile development versus those that are simply waterfall or spiral development in agile clothing.