Many Agile implementations in organizations suffer from this issue: humanity is taken out of Agile. In this article, learn how to make Agile more humane.
Join the DZone community and get the full member experience. “Can we get serious now?” quipped Captain Charles Sully Sullenberger, the iconic character played by Tom Hanks in the movie adaptation of the Airbus A320 Hudson Water landing incident. He goes on to articulate the crux of his argument in the safety hearing: “You are taking humanity out of the cockpit while looking for human errors.” I have a feeling – more from experience – that many of the Agile implementations that are done in organizations suffer from this very same issue: humanity is taken out of Agile. This is a sad irony as Agile by design is meant to amplify people practices. There are several manifestations of this in Agile. Task sign-up, self-organizing teams, servant leadership, a daily Scrum meeting, team retrospective, and various principles are all examples of the human side of Agile. Let me illustrate my view through a few examples. John (name changed) is a scrum master. He « manages » a team of six members having cross-functional skills. Every morning at 9:00 AM he meticulously conducts the daily Scrum meeting. I had the pleasure of observing some of these daily Scrum meetings. After watching this ceremony for a while, I felt that with advancements in AI, these meetings could easily be done by bots. They are full of the same questions, articulation, and responses. One unusual human-like meeting went like this though: Team Member: “I underestimated the task I am currently working on. I don’t think we can finish it in this Sprint.
