There's no end to agility.
There's no end to agility.

Scrum is only the beginning of going Agile

Many people think that when they use Scrum, they are an agile organization. Not wanting to be the bearer of doom, but it couldn’t be further away from the truth.

Agile and Scrum is not the same thing. Scrum is agile, but agile is not Scrum.

Scrum is a prescriptive guidebook containing practices on how to be more agile. It’s a great set of principles, and in a previous post I went into a little more detail of why Scrum works, yet, it’s not enough to make you fully agile.

What does agile look like then?

In a previous post, I looked at what an agile mind looks like, as the basis of learning how to be more a more agile organization.

One of the most pertinent reasons Scrum is not going to make you fully agile, is because it’s not possible to learn how to have a flexible mindset, by following a prescriptive set of practices of one methodology.

Like a great chef, the greatness comes only when you know the rules so well, that you can start breaking them and create your own recipes. No great chef follows the recipes in a cookbook. Similarly, no truly agile organization follows one agile method.

For flexibility, you need variety — variety in tools, teams and methods.

When you look at all the more agile companies out there, they mostly started with Scrum, but soon would follow a more Kanban-like workflow while reducing the identified waste, borrowed from Lean Manufacturing. Mostly, there are also some XP practices included in the daily team activities.

They never stick to only one method. Rather, they tend to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each method, and know when to apply which to get the desired results.

Just keep going…

Copying is the first part of learning. Following Scrum is a step in the right direction, but don’t stop there.

Keep going.

Everyday, find better ways to do the same things. Experiment. Evolve. Change. That’s agile.

Agile is a never-ending evolution, not the result of a transition.

Originally published on Medium: https://funficient.medium.com/scrum-is-only-the-beginning-of-going-agile-2e984ac7f348