Quay Consulting’s Senior Consultant Matthew Sharpe explores the ‘why’ of Agile as a methodology that works in an ever-changing, complex environment of project management.
Much has been made of the ‘how’ of agile – the methods, the trends, experiences and learnings – and understandably, Agile practitioners want to learn how to do it better and learn from experts to improve outcomes.
But much less is made of the ‘why’ of Agile and not just from the perspective of improving outcomes. Why does it work so well and why did Agile emerge out of the maelstrom of project management disciplines in the first place?
Constructs & the Human Mind
Businesses and projects, like everything in our society, are constructs of the human mind. We create order to our lives, our endeavours and to our objectives which stem directly from how we perceive reality. Project Management methodologies are just one manifestation of this.
Yet the imposed order is not a natural state. Human beings evolved in a chaotic system borne out of a random process of astronomical improbability, genetic mutations and a generous dose of good luck.
Not that long ago, humans lived in an unpredictable world; we didn’t know where the next meal would come from or whether the next bush would contain a sabre tooth Dinofelis ready to claim its next meal. The individuals who were more agile within their environment were those who survived to pass on their genes to the next generation.
“Thought can organize the world so well that you are no longer able to see it” – Anthony De Mello
Controlling the Environment
Over time, humans learned how to control their environment, societies started to form and things continued to evolve. We moved from subsistence to bartering to currency and to value exchange. We created capitalism and business, enterprise started to form and with that came processes, methods and an accepted way of getting things done.
Yet something wasn’t right. Projects failed more often than they succeeded. As project management became a discipline, there was a growing group of burned out, jaded and unemployed project managers that could see that things could and should be better.
And so it came to pass, 15 years ago on a snowy February night in a lodge inside the Wasatch Mountains, Utah, that a new paradigm emerged. The Agile Manifesto was born.
And it was good.
Why Agile Works When Other Methodologies Fail
So why does Agile work so well where other methods have sometimes failed so spectacularly? Is there something bigger at play that we haven’t fully understood?
Perhaps the reason behind its efficacy is the fact that, like life itself, Agile is rooted in uncertainty and accepts that change is not only inevitable but should be embraced and leveraged as a key characteristic of any project.
Life = Change
Human brains are hard-wired to think Agile yet our work environments are very often not. If we take a step back and look at who we are and what we do, it’s possible to harness greater insight on the power of agility and change.
Darwin was correct in his assertion that it was not the strongest that survive, but the most adaptable to change. Perhaps it is also true to say that it is those who are most agile who will survive in ever-changing, ever more complex environments so that the next time a Dinofelis drops out of that tree, you know what to do.
Mathew Sharpe is a Senior Consultant for Quay Consulting, working primarily in the Agile space. This article was originally published on his blog, DigitalTaskForce in February 2016.
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