The Path to a Better Way
In the last 2 posts we considered how some prominent Agile concepts and ideas may not be delivering their full potential. First, we looked at how work items tend to be treated as to-do lists, often arranged in a hierarchy. Then we examined the literary story/epic metaphor and the role it plays. In both cases, there were benefits at a small scale but they were lost as projects scale up in size.
In this post, we will explore an alternative approach, tackling the structure and the metaphor together. At the start, I suggested reconsidering long held assumptions. Now I am asking you to rotate your thinking 90 degrees, from a vertical hierarchy with a literary metaphor, to a horizontal flow and a journey metaphor.
Consider how you plan a journey on a GPS. First, you enter your final destination. If it is a long journey, you may have other interim destinations you need to pass through so you add them in too. Once that information is provided the system will suggest all the individual steps you need to take to get to each waypoint and ultimately to your destination.
It’s the same way products evolve. They start with a lofty goal; an objective or desired outcome. For any decent sized project these goals will be too big to achieve all at once. There will be checkpoints along the way to confirm it is on track to deliver the intended value and if it’s not, then adjust as necessary. Once the checkpoints have been identified, the individual work items to achieve each of them can be fleshed out.
