Agile Pragmatists: Their Latest Excuse

Scope:

I attend many meet-ups and have noticed that the "Agile Pragmatists" [1] are back. Their latest reasoning not to be "purists" as they would put it, is Agile at scale. I often hear the line:

"But this is scaled Agile"

Problem:

The problem with this is that the understanding that Agile is a Mind-Set not a mere process seems to have been lost again.

Agile Mind-Set from ICAgile [2]

How do we get back to Agile as a Mind-Set and away from a purists vs pragmatists battle which no one wins?

Solution:

The solution I believe is education. Once we educate the community that Agile is a Mind-set then it becomes clear you cannot scale one mind, but only many minds. People have to work together, not be fixed and commanded. Luckily it seems I am not the only one [3].

Thus we come to how to educate. Well I would say via the community. Meet-ups, blogs like this. Any avenue to get the message back out there [4].

After this if people still want to be "Agile Pragmatists" as they want to call themselves then they will have to explain what they mean by that alternative Mind-set and how the Agile Mind-set currently does not deliver their so, called pragmatists approach??? If they do manage this, we can then review to see if it is closer to a command and control (waterfall) mind-set [5] than being Agile.

Agile Link:

Its all in the mind :)

References:

[1] Scrum Purists, Posers, and Pragmatists: https://www.solutionsiq.com/scrum-purists-posers-and-pragmatists/

[2] ICAgile Agile Mind-set: http://image.slidesharecdn.com/2013-131213061027-phpapp01/95/introduction-to-the-international-consortium-for-agile-icagile-8-638.jpg?cb=1386915223

[3] Pragmatic Agile: https://dzone.com/articles/pragmatic-agile

[4] The People Leader Role in an Agile World: http://www.cardinalsolutions.com/blog/2013/02/the_people_leaderro

[5] Waterfall-Teamwork vs Agile-Teamwork: http://teamagility.net/posts/waterfall-teamwork-vs-agile-teamwork-part-2/