Agile Journey

One day you are sitting in a waiting room. Sitting to your right is a lady who suddenly tells you. "Do you know, I have never made a mistake in my life."

The woman sitting to your left looks intrigued. "You've never made a mistake?"

Ms. Perfect: "Never. Every thing I ever did, every thing I ever said was the absolute perfect thing to do or say at the time."

Ms. Curious: "That's odd. I make mistakes all the time. Which is why I keep a list to remember what I'm going to do today, have a place to put my car keys, look both ways before crossing the street..."

Ms. Perfect: "You look both ways??? Me, I never look at all. Don't need to look. I already know if someone is coming. If I went across the street, no one was coming. If I stopped, it's because there were cars coming."

Ms. Curious: "You don't even look. I always look. In fact, I look twice, in case I missed something."

Ms. Perfect: "Me, I never look. Because after all, I'm perfect. In fact, I hardly look at the road at all. I just count on my perfection to get me there."

Ms. Curious shakes her head in wonder.

Suddenly you look outside and your car is being towed away. Apparently, you were in a tow zone. You rush out side, but it's too late. But you saw the number on the tow truck. You call and yes you can pick up your vehicle if you pay the fine. You need your car badly, but you'll have to pick it up.

You go back inside and relate your ordeal. Both Ms. Perfect and Ms. Curious are willing to give you a ride to the tow lot, and you are desperate. Whatever your concerns are for riding with a stranger, they are outweighed by your urgent need to get your car in time to pick up your children not much later in the day. And these 2 ladies are your only option for doing that.

So which car do you ride with, the one with the lady who claims she never makes a mistake and needs not to even look at what's going on around her, or the one with the lady who says she's cautious because she might make mistakes, so she always looks and double checks things?

So with whom you will travel on the Agile journey?

Design Thinking and Agile

Recently, while doing a course on Design Thinking from University of Virginia Darden School of Business, I had an Aha moment. While Design Thinking focuses on once off design of a product but Agile talks about continuous improvement. Then how do Design Thinking and Agile gel in an Agile-oriented organization?

Before diving into Design Thinking vs Agile, let’s take a step back. Is continuous improvement only way forward in an Agile organization? If the answer is NO then how innovation should be looked into an Agile organization?

In any organization, continuous improvement happens at two levels:

• Incremental continuous improvement
• Quantum jump or break though

Incremental continuous improvement results in numerous small improvements in a process or a product which add up over time and results in significant improvement.

As the name suggests quantum jump or breakthrough results in phenomenon improvement in a short duration of time.

Due to natural lethargic nature of organizations, productivity and efficient gained between two consecutive breakthroughs sag and distance between consecutive quantum jumps increases.

To keep the upward trend two quantum jumps and reducing the distance between quantum jumps any organizations need a fair intake of incremental continuous improvement.

An Agile organization may utilize Design Thinking as one of the tools for the quantum jump while incremental continuous increment keeps the lights on.