Native Agile and Agile Immigrants

As we all know the first statement from the agile manifesto says “individuals and interactions over processes and tool”. The individuals and interactions play the core role if you want to be agile, clear. However these individuals and interactions are dramatically changing nowadays. Luckily I can now observe in my projects the first native digital generation being mature already (they are all about 30) and the style they work and communicate. Native digitals are socialized with getting feedback fast, with fast information processing, working in parallel and asynchronous, and as a cause with the fast success or failure. "Think big, act small, fail fast; learn rapidly" is the famous pitch out of the book Lean Software Development of Mary and Tom Poppendieck.

These guys have agility in blood, they are native agile.

In contrast I can observe the growing community of the agile immigrants. Similar to the cargo cult they attend to courses and earn such titles as certified ScrumMaster and so on. They offer agility as a product. However you cannot become agile within one week. You are not agile because you run iterations or execute daily meetings. To be agile you have to switch the set of paradigms your life is based on. And it is very difficult or even impossible for the pure agile immigrants.

If you are such an agile immigrant, just hire some native digitals and try to observe them. Give them some basic information about agile principles and start an agile project. It won’t be for sure 100% successful. However you and they will learn a lot. The agile culture will evolve. That is the one and only way to grow to be agile.

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