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Seems like every person I talk to about “Agile” (a word that’s been uttered so many times, I fear it’s lost its meaning) immediately wants to talk about product backlogs, sprints, standups, burndowns, …. i.e. Methods. They all want to talk about “doing agile.”  But I’ve yet to find anyone with any interest in being agile… i.e. Approach.

In my talk, What the Business Expects from Agile, I used the example of building a bridge to illustrate this. Upon further rumination, I think it’s a great metaphor for why doing Scrum isn’t being agile.

Do the simplest thing possible.

Do the simplest thing possible.

Do the simplest thing possible.

That’s agile.

So here’s my bridge example:

Our project goal is to hold a circus.

We’re going to hold the circus on a patch of land. (Take it as a given – a government regulation.) To get to that land, we need to get across a gully that’s deep and wide.

So – discarding a bunch of requirements for the moment about circuses, the current objective is to get us over to that patch of land. We’ve surveyed the area and decided that a bridge over the gully is the best way to get there.

Let’s build a bridge.

Do the simplest thing possible.

Get me across that gully so I can see the patch of land. Where are we going to put the tent? Where will we put concessions? I don’t know until I can see the landscape. Let me stand on it. Build me a simple bridge. Architecturally stable – I don’t want it to collapse under my feet. The weight requirement is that it needs to hold an adult human.

That’s when someone says, “Are you going to have elephants in this circus? You’re going to want a more sturdy bridge.”

“Going to.” I say. (because I’m agile.) Right now, I just want to get myself across.

“That’s a waste – you know you’re going to need a bigger bridge later, so why are you wasting everyone’s time building a small one now?”

Two reasons:
1. I don’t want to wait for the elephants to arrive to start laying out where the circus tent goes. I want to get over there now.
2. I may decide not to have elephants. Or to helicopter them in. Or to hold the circus somewhere else. Or not at all.

So now who’s being wasteful? We build a superstructure when we know we need one and know how we’re going to use it.

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I know it’s hyperbole to say that Scrum isn’t agile. Scrum fits in very well with Agile. But Scrum does not equal Agile. You can build a ginormous bridge incrementally, using scrum-like tools … but you may be building the wrong thing and may have difficulty changing course.

Because agile isn’t about building the thing, it’s about getting from here to there.