Agile - It's a Mindset, stupid!

I’ve been on a trek with agile recently. Looking into how it should or should not work. Say: agile traps: sprint based waterfall, wagile, waterfall vs agile, or even swapping values in agile manifesto

The one thing that was elusive to me was: what is agile??

I felt using the “waterfall vs agile” would give me an answer. Understanding how they differ helps in understanding what agile is not.

Which helps in knowing what agile is not, but at the same time, not helpful because there’s still a wide range of what agile can be.

Until I had a discussion with my previous boss on what agile is. To him:

The most important thing about agile is there is collaboration.

Ah-ha! This is a good start.

I had a meeting with the company’s agile coach on what agile is and their answer:

Agile is a mindset. The most important parts of the mindset are everyone is:

• delivering incremental value
• take in feedback
• inclusive

Ahhh - these definitions of agile start to provide definition. Probably the key to my understanding of what agile is - agile is a mindset, not a set of practices.

In a way, engaging with actual people in the domain can provide far better value than searching online. If you want to chat more about this or anything else - contact me.