Going Agile

“The aim of life is some way of living, as flexible and gentle as human nature; so that ambition may stoop to kindness, and philosophy to condor and humour. Neither prosperity nor empire nor heaven can be worth winning at the price of a virulent temper, bloody hands, an anguished spirit, and a vain hatred of the rest of the world.” – George Santayana

In the software development world, agile modelling or agile model-driven development is defined as the following:

“Agile is an iterative and incremental (evolutionary) approach to software development which is performed in a highly collaborative manner by self-organizing teams with “just enough” ceremony that produces high quality software in a cost effective and timely manner which meets the changing needs of its stakeholders.”

In plain English and put simply this means that you do stuff in a way that is flexible and promoting to the idea of change.

I’ve worked with many large companies across the country and for some of them the idea of becoming agile and doing things in a new way is a scary prospect, especially when an entire business operates on a rigid set of procedures and goals.

Many of these companies have strict procedures for how things should be done, by when and to what standard, yet in the real world which contains real people; things don’t tend to work in the way most of them want. Sometimes situations change, contexts change, people change and ideas change and the standard response too these situations from those kinds of company are ones of annoyance, aggression, diminished self worth and poor employee satisfaction.

I got to thinking about how a similar principle might be a useful distinction in my own life and I realised how non-agile I had been in many of the things I wanted from life.
One of the key things I hear from people who have been to coaching or have studied NLP change work is that they feel like they should be able to get the results they desire but for some reason they don’t seem to be able too.
As I’ve found, this usually comes down to one of two things going on for the person.

1. They’re not being true to themselves
2. They’re lacking in some kind of agility or flexibility

In the first case the issue is usually because the person is doing something they don’t really want to do either because someone else told them to or because they’re trying to please people on the outside instead of building the life they want for themselves.

The second case is very similar with a couple of key exceptions.

Firstly, when people come to me and they tell me about the dreams and goals they’ve had and not been able to achieve, the first thing I ask them is whether this is something they still want, right here, right now.
That often seems like an odd question for people when I ask it because they make the assumption that because they once wanted something that they must still want it now.

I remember talking to a guy who told me that his goal in life was to become financially rich and to make millions of pounds so that he could live a life of high speed cars and dare-devil eXtreem sports. He was depressed because no matter what he did, he just didn’t seem to be able to get what he thought he wanted. When I asked him whether this was still something he wanted he looked at me with an odd kind of expression almost insinuating that my audacity to question his desires was way out of line.
So I asked him, “what’s been going on in your life this past couple of years?” He started telling me about how he met the woman of his dreams only two years ago and how they now have a beautiful baby daughter together. He regaled me with stories about the day she was born, her first few hairs on her head, the cute little smile she seems to have when he walked into the room and his joy at being the best father he could be.

I looked at him curiously and asked him again “So, making millions of pounds and driving high speed cars is still a goal you want to get?” Something in his mind shifted at that point as he realised that his life had moved on from where it was before and his old goals just didn’t fit in with the life he wanted for himself.

This is one of the reasons I prefer to help people set up different directions in their life and to show them how they can get what they want and not just what they think they want.

Like many of these companies I’ve worked with, the stringent approach of following specifications to the letter, communicating in the most restrictive ways possible (often email is one of those ways) and lacking a flexible approach to changing scenarios and situations is a sure fire way to make sure you feel bad about not achieving what you thought you wanted to achieve.
In software development the agile approach promotes and embraces change, human interaction and regular reviews.

The fun bit where you get to do stuff:

1. Think about some of the goals you’ve set yourself and don’t seem to be achieving
2. Ask yourself; Is this still something I want in my life?
3. If it’s not something you still want, take it off your list of goals
4. If you find it is something you still want in your life, ask yourself “What’s stopping me from getting what I want and which of these restrictions are ones I’m putting in my own way”. (The most common types of restrictions people put in the way of their own success are things like: I’m too old, It has to be done this specific way, It has to be done by x time otherwise I’m a failure or it has to be done through hard work and if fun is involved I’m not going to succeed.)

If you’re finding that you have goals that you don’t seem to be able to achieve the chances are that you’re trying to get the result in a specific way instead of adapting to the changing environment and taking the path of least resistance.

The fact is, when you become aware of the restrictions you’d put on your own success and you notice how times have changed, contexts have changed and you have changed already, you start to see how ridiculous is really is to have goals that are static and non-adapting and you start to do things that line up both your concious and unconcious processes towards a direction that makes your life fuller and richer.

As always, I look forward to hearing some fantastic stories and comments and finding out how you’ve decided to do old things in new ways to take your life to the next level.

Love, Jamie