Martyn Richard Jones

Brussels 10th June 2019

Today I want to talk with you about energising the Agile Way of Working brand.

Sadly, the Agile Way of Working movement seems to be temporarily on the wane. The adoption rate of AWOW has not risen in line with expectations. It’s stuck in the doldrums between Scylla and Charybdis. Which makes for frowns all around.

But, me being me, I didn’t leave it at that. That’s a challenge, right there! Let’s go for it! Let’s turn those frowns upside-down

As result, I searched for a way to help the Agile@Scale crowd out, and I eventually came up with ten amazing pieces of incredible advice on how to easily make ‘Agile Way of Working’ truly something worth having around.

So, here we have it:

1. First, change its name from the Agile Way of Working to the Agile Way of Whacking Off (Agile WOWO), you know, a touchy-feely way to “sex up” requirements. Bush and Blair style.
2. Epics will be referred to as Dodgy Dossiers, User Stories will become Curated Jokes and Sprints will become Streaks.
3. People working on Streaks will be known as Streakers, chapter members will be known as Schleppers and guild members will be known as Schmucks, everyone else will be referred to as Bernie or Helen.
4. Every morning Dodgy Dossier Owners must repeat the term “Agile Operating Model” until they puke their guts out.
5. All Scrum and Kanban boards are be replaced with life-sized wack-a-mole models.
6. Only those kitted out as My Little Pony or Princess Line can use coloured post-it notes.
7. Anyone caught using the names Google, Spotify, Netflix or Zappos.com will be denied the oxygen of publicity.
8. Anyone evidenced repeating the terms “by design”, “learning journey” and “minimum viable product” will be denied the oxygen of oxygen.
9. Anyone caught using comic images of rockets, astronauts or planets (including the sun) anywhere in their “content” will be forever referred to as a feckin space-cadet.
10. If you can’t defecate rainbows on demand then you have no right being involved in Agile at Scale or the Agile Way of Whacking Off.

There you have it. Ten jolly and sensible policies for a happy world of Agile at Scale and Agile WOWO.

Many thanks for reading,

This is Martyn Jones of goodstrat.com – THE GOOD STRATEGY COMPANY

Until next time.

Contact me at martyn dot jones at goodstrat dot com