The Essence of Agile

How much of Agile practices can you remove before it becomes no longer Agile?

I was having a discussion that other day with another project manager, and this fellow was saying that he didn’t think you could do Agile without having a card wall.  Now, I’ve done Agile development before using just an Excel spread sheet instead of a card wall to track the progress, so I know for a fact that you could do Agile without the card wall. 

So I said I disagreed and we left it at that.

A little while later, I thought about the matter a bit more and decided that I haven’t changed my mind.  It is not the card wall that determines if you are doing Agile or not.

Let me give an analogy.  The other week my 6-year old son and I were playing basketball.  We weren’t in any basketball uniform.  I was in jeans, and he was in his civvies. We were still playing basketball, weren’t we?

We also were not following basketball rules: each time he makes a shot, it’s worth 50 points. Each time I make a shot, it’s worth 1 point. We were still playing basketball, weren’t we?

Also, he didn’t have to dribble: he could run with the ball as much as he likes. We were still playing basketball, weren’t we?

Lastly, we were not even using a basketball ball. We were using a soccer ball (our basketball ball was too heavy for him). We were still playing basketball, weren’t we?  I believe so.

My point is that there is a core in Agile that represents the essence. The card wall is not an essential part of it.

The idea of the card wall originated from the concept of ‘kanban’, a Just-in-Time (JIT) system developed at Toyota many years ago (as far back as the 1930s would you believe it?).  I’ll write about what kanban is in another post, and explain the big difference between it and how the card wall is used in Agile development. 

The important thing is that in Agile, the card wall is simply a reporting tool.  It give you a synoptic (‘at a glance’) view of where things are.  It is not part of the essence of Agile.

The essence of Agile is constant feedback and constant adjustment. 

The card wall, the daily stand-ups, even the sprints, are merely communication and administrative techniques.  You can replace each one of these with completely new techniques (potentially better) and still be doing Agile!