The Agile Executive

Readers of Software Craftsmanship might recall the association made in the post between Beautiful Software and the Cluetrain Manifesto. With the 10-year anniversary of the debut of the printed edition of the Manifesto, Simon Owens interviewed three of the four authors. The book and the interview are not about software development – they are about the Internet. Yet the profound relevance  to Agile software development is nicely captured by Simon in one short sentence:

The writing stresses the need for authenticity above all else….

The imperative need to have authentic conversations with your Agile teams and key stakeholders is highlighted by Ken Schwaber in a recent interview on AgileCollab, as follows:

I estimate that 75% of those organizations using Scrum will not succeed in getting the benefits that they hope for from it… The intention of Scrum is to make [their dysfunctions] transparent so the organization can fix them. Unfortunately, many organizations change Scrum to accommodate the inadequacies or dysfunctions instead of solving them.

Better heed the good counsel of the Cluetrain Manifesto authors and Ken if your Agile software is in trouble. Backlogs and burn-down charts are no doubt important. But, they are no substitute for authenticity.