The other day I had an interesting thought. I’ m not sure what precipitated it exactly, but there were several things that led me to this idea I’ve been mulling in my head. Perhaps it was Alistair Coburn’s keynote at Agile 2009 where he said that Agile as a distinct entity was gone; if it was once an iceberg, it has since melted and is now just part of the ocean. It could have been Jeff Sutherland’s presentation where he points out that 84% of IT organizations are self-reporting to use Scrum. Or perhaps it was simply working with a current client when they were asking for my help to come up with very clear guidelines about the number of acceptance criteria that should be allowed for a single story. Anyway, it struck me: as Scrum grows in popularity, are we institutionalizing it? more »

In 1996 a friend of mine asked me what my New Years Resolution was. I didn’t have one, so I thought one up on the spot, “My resolution is to quit making New Years Resolutions.” I have stuck with it for fourteen years now.

The idea behind New Years Resolutions is great. We should reflect on the year that has past, think about what we would like to do differently in the future, and resolve to make that change. That is a great thing to do. The problem is that when we only do it once a year we tend to fail. Then, we wait a whole year to reflect and do it again.

So, this year resolve to stop making New Years Resolutions. Instead, reflect on your behavior soon, and make changes right then. Change every month, every week, every hour. Soon you will get good at changing and those promises you make to yourself will come true more often than not.

That is the lesson of Agile: self-reflection is hard, and we kind of suck at it. Change is hard, and we kind of suck at it. If we do it more often then we will have to do less each time and it won’t be so hard. If we do it more often then we will get good at it and it won’t suck so much.