Agile Base Patterns in the Agile Canon
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2016 49th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences Agile Base Patterns in the Agile Canon Daniel R Greening Senex Rex [email protected] Abstract I partitioned practices in these agile methodologies Agility is the capacity of an actor (organization, by how they produced agility. Five groups emerged. I team, individual) to rapidly sense, adapt and create to then wrote an “agile base pattern” for each group. achieve goals in a rapidly changing economic I claim actors that Measure Economic Progress, environment. When an actor follows the first three base Proactively Experiment to Improve and Limit Work-in- patterns in the Agile Canon—Measure Economic process are agile, but can find it difficult to sustain. Progress, Proactively Experiment to Improve and Actors that Embrace Collective Responsibility gain Limit Work-in-process—it is agile. Its pace can keep resiliency. Actors that Solve Systemic Problems expand up with change. Adding a fourth—Embrace Collective agility beyond their boundaries. Responsibility—provides resiliency. The fifth—Solve Systemic Problems—expands agility beyond the actor 0.1.Pattern Languages boundary. To assess an actor, measure its conformance to these Agile Base Patterns. Agile researchers often People struggle to learn large ecosystems of frame their activities against the descriptive Agile concepts, such as agile management. Concept Manifesto for Software Development. This has overly descriptions in isolation make little sense, especially if constrained their impact. The prescriptive Agile Canon they only teach us How to do something, not Why it pattern language is an alternative that could broaden works. Faced with this challenge, architecture and strengthen agile understanding and application. professor Christopher Alexander developed a pattern language approach [3] to explain how to create healthy 0. Introduction towns, buildings and construction [4]. We adopt his approach for agile practices. Each pattern stands independently, describing a People often ask: How agile are we? The Agile context, a problem, forces that constrain solutions, a Manifesto, the most recognized definition, covers only solution that reconciles the forces and mitigates the software, but doesn’t really answer this question. problem, examples that use the solution and a resulting In this vacuum, breathless advocates contradict context. Patterns explain why; when we understand themselves. Agile is anything from no-rules self- why a solution is needed, we remember and use it. organization to command-and-control [2]. Pattern languages are collections of patterns But accepted agile methodologies have a goal. organized from general to specific. They describe an Agile methodologies seek to rapidly sense ecosystem generatively. Reading just the first pattern environmental change, adapt capabilities, and create of a pattern language provides value. Ideally, you can solutions. I assert agile methodologies adapt to chaos invent later patterns by applying earlier patterns. [16] to gain competitive advantage. We grudgingly pay The Agile Canon proposes a "theory of everything" for agility because it helps us win. pattern language for agile methodologies. The Agile Most creative activities can benefit from agility. As Base Patterns described here are the generative agilists make software production agile, we discover beginning of the Canon. non-agile actors outside software impede our agility. With this effort we address the most obvious and But when most people encounter the term “software” general agile questions: Why do all these agile in the Agile Manifesto for Software Development, they methodologies work? When do specific agile conclude “agile is a software thing.” Previously techniques apply? Is a specific effort, enterprise or proposed agile patterns have emphasized software [15]. person agile? We hope a general framework will help Agilists study and teach many related people answer field and methodology specific methodologies—Scrum, XP, Kanban, Lean Startup, questions. We also hope to guide people to the right Getting Things Done, Pomodoro and Lean methodology for their particular situation. Manufacturing—because they reinforce each other. Without further ado, let’s get to the base patterns. 1530-1605/16 $31.00 © 2016 IEEE 53675368 DOI 10.1109/HICSS.2016.664 1. Pattern: Measure Economic Progress unqualified commitments, but chaotic economies produce probability distributions. We can study others who succeed, imitate their Considering too many metrics creates confusion activities and gain their skills. But once we reach their and misalignment. Many organizations measure and capabilities, how can we improve further? report everything thought to be interesting, all the way up to executives. But this increases cognitive load and 1.1.Plans don’t guarantee creative success … decreases decision-making quality. Cognitive biases skew subjective measurements. Creative efforts operate in an economy: a system They affect team estimates, customer surveys, where people manage limited resources to maximize employee performance assessments and more. return and growth. Economies drive everything. They Every economy evolves: this year’s resource limits need not involve currency. We can measure are next year’s surplus. For example, startup philanthropic efforts by the number of lives saved per companies initially must show market traction. Later, unit of volunteer effort. We can measure companies by these same companies must show profitability. price-earnings ratio, market share or employee welfare. Variation accompanies creativity and chaotic economies. Aggressive attempts to control variation 1.2.Forces can destroy creativity. Well-intentioned process gurus applying Six Sigma to product development degraded 1.2.1. Economies innovation in several companies [13], including famous innovator 3M [25]. Economic actors who operate without a well- defined economy wander aimlessly. They don’t know 1.2.3. Rewards what they value. They don’t know their costs. Whether individual, company or nation, economic When measurement drives reward, people game the actors without a compass will likely dither and fail as measurements. People can game perceived value by their unguided efforts cancel each other out. simply omitting measurements. Monetary reward fails to produce better creativity. 1.2.2. Measurement Daniel Pink popularized the discovery that creativity improves when we reward people with mastery, The most accurate measurements of success can autonomy and purpose [48]. This does not require us to significantly lag the completion of creative work. discard economic metrics; it reveals that mastery, Lagging metrics applied to current decisions can fail autonomy and purpose are major elements in our perversely. For example, creative effort to build a economy. strong asset can cost money. If this cost is characterized as a current loss, the company may invest 1.3.… therefore, measure economic progress badly [21]. Progress metrics (or “leading indicators”) provide with well-chosen, evolving metrics. short-term guidance. We can use progress metrics to To “measure economic progress,” articulate what forecast short-term results, but predictions in a chaotic you truly value, find metrics to detect progress or system worsen exponentially with time, making long- retreat, and measure frequently. The best economic term forecasting impossible. Chaos even changes the progress metrics for agile actors are low-cost (so you utility of progress metrics: those that work now may can run them frequently) and fast (so you can adapt perform badly later. rapidly). Net Promoter Score surveys can measure Progress metrics that are blind to significant risk, loyalty in a single question [46]. such as measuring untested and unreleased software production, often do not correlate well with desired outcomes, and thus produce bad decisions. 1.3.1. Identify desired outcomes A single metric rarely serves to guide wise Identify the biggest economic actor you influence decisions. (e.g., the company if you are an executive), examine its Costly metrics inhibit frequent monitoring and economy and articulate its goals. A mission statement produce inaccuracies. For example, detailed surveys lists timeless objectives, a vision statement lists multi- with dozens of questions will skew measurements year objectives, and goals are short-term objectives (a toward respondents with spare time. year or a quarter). Work to reconcile them. Construct a Managers demand forecasts to make decisions, and concise, specific description of your current strategic many such decisions cannot be deferred. They prefer activities at each time scale. Gain consensus from colleagues that everyone will seek these outcomes. The 53685369 better you can align desired outcomes, the more stable discussing their own failures, before asking employees your metrics will be over time and the more productive to reveal theirs. your efforts. 1.3.5. Evolve 1.3.2. Identify relevant metrics Commit to a regular cadence to review and evolve Consider our goals for better measurements [37]. metrics to meet emerging needs. Metrics that serve We seek better progress measurements, which well at the beginning of a long project may not work produce better insights, which produce better toward the end. decisions, which produce better outcomes. Our mission, vision and goals describe desired 1.4.Resulting Context outcomes. We work backward from those outcomes to identify progress metrics; hence this technique is called Actors using this pattern