Don’t Call It Agile

Managing Agile Under Tight Deadlines

In a landscape marked by tight deadlines and ever-growing feature lists, fully embracing Agile methodologies seemed like a lofty aspiration. It wasn’t so much resistance to change as it was the immediate demands of our projects that made Agile appear less practical. We occasionally had to set aside ideal practices to meet urgent deadlines.

Agile Aspirations, Practical Limitations

We spent time learning Agile methods and talking about sprints and backlogs. But when it came to actually working, our approach didn’t live up to the Agile ideal. We were stuck in a cycle of talking a lot about Agile but not making it happen.

No Manifesto, Just Action

To set the stage, let’s go back to a challenging project we undertook — we were working on a bigger feature that involved some thinking as nobody had built it in our team before. As usual, we pushed it into a sprint, had some user-stories, and then started development. After two weeks we presented the feature, but it was not how the product team wished for.

So we agreed on doing a prototype which involved a lot of collaboration between the teams, there was a spark of enthusiasm. Everyone involved felt it, we had fun while having failed and going all over.

We revised the user-stories based on our prototype, some technical limitations, and optimizations. After two weeks we had something fully refined and ready to go live. This is more productive than we thought.

The spark lit up. We sat together on the next feature we tried to have the same understanding of the feature. After this, we created the user stories, sketched out the scope for an initial prototype, and started developing. Again very fast, one meeting, and we were good to go.

It was a creative and empowering working environment for everyone. The energy was infectious. People wanted in. For the first time, they were excited to share experiences, offer insights, and participate in the creation process. We initiated a process built on prototypes, realistic analyses, and iterative development.

Agile Born from Necessity

As the process matured, a startling fact emerged: we were practicing Agile. Not the classroom-taught, manifesto-spouting Agile we had failed at, but a vibrant, organic form of Agile that sprang from actual needs and shared enthusiasm.

The secret sauce? The creative energy of a collective is built on the practical pillars of quick iteration, transparency, and immediate feedback. No more dogma. We were learning Agile by doing, not by following a rigid script.

The Name Doesn’t Matter

I still don’t like the term “Agile”. But the underlying methodology? It works, especially when it’s organically cultivated. We’ve taken our first baby steps into a kind of Agile that finally makes sense for us, replete with excitement and dynamism.

So, let’s drop the labels and focus on what works. Real-world problems require real-world solutions, not textbook dogma.