Its important to understand the journey, the connection, and philosophy to draw the correlation. People enter the agile world from many different fields. In my case, Agile was entered from the world of athletics, from the world of sport psychology.
You want to win the championship, you want to build a winning software. How, whats the similarity. Take the next few minutes to see these dots get connected by the X's and O's.
Athletics - Team sport (for easy of comparing, athletic team to an agile team)
Team regularly occurring events
Season - Goals to be accomplished
Practices - continues improvement, continues development
Huddles - what is important now, how will we handle it?
Scrimage - practice game
Games - check what you are capable to handle, selection of a few specific goals to be accomplished
Playoffs - step up your game
Championship - all or nothing
Players grow and improve - continues development
Scholarship - getting funding to continue to operate educational fund
Agile regularly occurring events
Project - Goals to be accomplished
sprint & stand-ups - continues improvement continues development with a selection of a few specific goals to be accomplished
huddles - what is important now, how will we handle it?
Planning - what is the next set of goals to be accomplished
Demos - what have we accomplished so far (kind of like scrimmage and games)
Retrospective - what have we done well, what is to be improved?
Sprint Reviews - what have we learned
Funding - getting funding to continue to operate
Everyone knows what is happening - transparency
The events might sound different, however they are the same. An athletic team wants to win and so does a technology company who wants to be acquired or go public on the stock market.
As a coach this provides an advantage to understand the human behavior, lines of communication, clarify needs and purpose, create a way for teams to be willing to dig deeper, establish self and team awareness. Embrace all who are involved and move as a team plus so much more.
Bridging athletics to tech and tech to athletics provides endless ways to grow in many ways. As a great athlete once said “You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend.” Bruce Lee
Understand what is the goal, what milestones are important, pace yourself, understand areas of strength, areas for improvement, what are the opportunities, what are some of the threats, mitigate and remove obstacles, continue to grow and improve, keep an open mind, make it a better place by taking the whole person in consideration.
In summary: Mission is the same - enable you to reach your peak!
