Whenever an enterprise wants to introduce agile as the new big thing, you hear a lot about the benefits. What you will hear very often is, that everything is going to be faster. Well, cheaper as well, but even if it doesn’t get any cheaper, you will definitely finish everything much faster.
Let’s take a look at the word itself and the meaning behind it. This is what Merriam Webster has to say about it:
1 : marked by ready ability to move with quick easy grace – an agile dancer
2 : having a quick resourceful and adaptable character – an agile mind
On one side we have graceful movement, and on the other a resourceful and adaptable character and an agile mind. Since agile movement is based in the software development, and software development is somewhat of a mental activity, it is a safe bet, that the second definition is the one to go with.
Agile introduces resourcefulness and adaptability. What I hear is not speed of going ahead, but the speed of changing your concepts and adapting your solutions to a suddenly changing environment.
Being agile doesn’t mean quickly reaching a firmly set long term goal. Being agile means reacting fast when the goal suddenly changes. It means seeing things from a new perspective, changing your mind set, changing your habits in a very fast pace. Sometimes even every two weeks.
How can there be no speed up, when everyone is using agile methodologies to shorten their time to market? If you use agile to implement a set number of features for your product, meaning that your product is only finished, when all the features are implemented, you wont be any faster than using any other methodology. Your good ole’ waterfall will do better, if you are good at it.
Agile delivers the most important features first. Not all of them. Just the important few. And since this is just a fraction of the full feature set, the product can reach the customer much earlier. This is how the time to market is shortened. The full feature set, as conceptualized at the beginning, will probably never be implemented. Other features are born from the interaction with the customer and implemented instead.
If you expected the speed of light, agile is not your silver bullet. It is not the magic wand that somehow enables you to break the famous triangle speed – quality – cost by increasing the speed at no cost and no quality loss. If you want to become faster, buy a Lamborghini.
The good news is that enables you to react to the change faster, to transform faster, to start every iteration with a new mindset. It help you to understand your customers’ needs faster, and adapt your products to their wishes and satisfaction. If you are looking to speed up the change, then agile is right for you.
When fighting to introduce agile, don’t use the speed as your first argument. Not even as a second. Do yourself a favor and don’t use it at all.