4 Agile Values are quite well known to most organizations. Yet, here they are for a quick refresher.
- Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
- Working software over comprehensive documentation
- Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
- Responding to change over following a plan
“That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.”
If you look closely at each of these values, underlying is the fundamental need of a team/organization that exhibits trust to be able to truly follow these values.
Let’s examine each one.
“Individuals and interactions over processes and tools"
This first one is pretty straightforward. Examine if your organization’s management and/or leadership tend to believe in and trust processes and tools more than their own people. Or see if people are more inclined to follow the processes verbatim and paint a rosy picture on tools than taking calculated risks while trying to be innovative. If so, there’s a need to understand what the root cause is if you want your organization to be able to embrace this value.
This does not mean that prima facie any of leadership, management, or the teams are at fault. One should not jump to any hasty conclusion that will quickly defeat such root cause analysis. A well-facilitated, independent, and inclusive retrospective workshop could uncover the strains in the team/organization and identify ways to resolve them.