‘The Joy of Agility’ by Joshua Kerievsky

‘The Joy of Agility: How to Solve Problems and Succeed Sooner’ by Joshua Kerievsky

Who should read this book?

“The Joy of Agility” could appeal to a wide range of readers.

It offers valuable insights to individuals who are new to Agile concepts. This book provides a comprehensive exploration of Agile principles beyond the confines of popular frameworks, making it an intriguing read for those seeking an introduction to the subject.

Seasoned Agile professionals can find value in this book as well. Its expansive perspective encourages readers not to make assumptions and challenges established norms, making it an excellent resource for those looking to refresh their understanding and foster a deeper appreciation of Agile methodologies.

Why you should read this book (or not)?

“The Joy of Agility” is a delightful and accessible read that is enriched by over 100 captivating stories featuring real people, teams, and organizations. These narratives serve as vivid illustrations of Agile wisdom, even though, in my view, some of these might diverge from the fundamental tenets of Agile.

What sets this book apart is its ability to offer a comprehensive perspective on Agile that extends far beyond the realms of innovation and development. It brilliantly conveys the notion that Agility is not a rigid formula, a single framework, or a mere set of roles and rituals to adhere to; rather, it is a way of life and thinking.

What I found particularly commendable is the book’s willingness to challenge conventional wisdom. It thoughtfully elucidates why Amazon’s famed “2 pizza rule” can be bent without compromising success, or why sprints, contrary to popular belief, may sometimes stifle progress rather than foster it.

Furthermore, “The Joy of Agility” stands out for its extensive references to other literature, which adds depth and context to the subject matter.

On the flip side, if I were to identify a downside, it would be that I didn’t gain a wealth of new insights; instead, it served as a valuable refresher for me.

Nevertheless, the book is an absolute joy to read. Its engaging stories, fresh perspectives, and broad exploration of Agile concepts make it a valuable addition to any Agile practitioner’s bookshelf.

Interesting extracts

“Stop hurrying, find balance. and learn “quickness under control.” Be quick – but don’t hurry.”

“Very successful companies have never struck me as particularly busy; in fact, they are, as a group, rather laid-back. Energy is evident in the workplace. but it’s not the energy tinged with fear that comes from being slightly behind on everything. The companies I have come to admire most show little obvious sense of hurry!” 

“To be clear, DeMarco isn’t arguing against efficiency. He’s arguing against focusing on efficiency to the exclusion of everything else. When that happens, you just get more efficient at what you already do, without making time for other vital concerns, like adapting to changing customer needs, responding to disruptive technologies, adjusting to a changing business climate, and evaluating serious competitive threats. DeMarco said: The overstressed organization is so busy making itself efficient that it has clean forgotten how to be effective.”

“Phil Ensor, a management consultant who invented the term functional silo syndrome in 1988, likened the grain silos he would pass on his drives through Illinois to the silos he found in organizations. A siloed team tends to focus on its own work and doesn’t collaborate gracefully with other siloed teams. When an organization needs work to be done across silos, you end up with slow handoffs-one silo waiting a while for another silo to complete work.

Teams that are truly agile work quickly and easily and have few to no slow handoffs. They are composed of the right mix of staff (something we call a “balanced team”) to enable high-speed value creation and delivery. Two of the most agile teams I’ve ever worked with were not small. One team had sixteen full-time people (and several more part-time staff) while the other had thirty full-time people.

Their effectiveness goes against the literature on ideal team size, which cites “scientific” research about how the highest-performing teams are usually around four to six people. The only trouble is, most of this “ideal team size” research wasn’t conducted with deeply agile, balanced teams. And none of this research discusses the slowness of handoffs between small teams.

An Amazon software team can be fed with just two pizzas and has the autonomy to deliver valuable work to customers without having to wait on slow hand- offs to other teams. This concept has become enormously popular. The trouble is many organizations that have adopted “two-pizza teams” have failed to give them autonomy to work without slow handoffs to other teams.”

“While he is best known for safety leadership, Mr. O’Neill’s higher mission was something he called habitual excellence. He believed that in order for any organization to have a potential for habitual excellence, everyone in the organization needed to answer yes to the following three questions:

1. Are you treated with dignity and respect every day by everyone you encounter without regard to race, or gender, or nationality, or pay level. or rank, or any other qualifying characteristic?
2. Can you say, “I’m given the things I need, education, and training, and financial support, and encouragement-that’s really important—so that I can make a contribution to this organization that gives meaning to my life”?
3. Are you recognized every day by someone whose judgment you value?”

 “Myles’s company allowed people to work in highly unsafe ways. Their production database wasn’t being backed up; their engineers had no safe, standard development process that would protect them from making huge, costly mistakes; people worked solo rather than in pairs or groups that could increase safety; and a development sandbox didn’t exist. When the CEO blamed Myles, he failed to recognize how unsafe his company was and how that contributed to a culture of blame.

If you want high performance and professional results, treat your people with dignity and respect. Start by making it safe to fail.”

“In his book Originals, Adam Grant wrote, “If you look at Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, it wasn’t that their average is so much better than their peers. It’s that they generated sometimes 600 or 1,000 different compositions. A few of those are considered true masterpieces.” A multiplicity of data, artifacts, or experiments can increase your chances of producing masterpieces. But how much is enough, since this work is not without cost?

Amazon faced this problem in its early days. Employees were running lots of experiments, many of which lacked a clear hypothesis and value proposition. Jeff Holden, who designed experimentation engines at Amazon, Groupon, and Uber, helped Amazon pivot to a model in which experiments were first reviewed by an experiments group. That group guided experimenters to check the validity and value of their experiments. This adjustment helped the company focus on valuable instead of aimless, experimentation.”

“In fact, based on experiences with many teams, I’ve found that it’s harder for beginners to succeed with sprints than without them. Shifting away from sprints was a milestone in my agile journey. It was a joy to discover how something I once thought was vital to agility (sprints) was not vital at all, how dropping sprints helped make software development faster, easier, and more graceful, and how my team could become even more poised to adapt to customer needs. This experience of dropping sprints paved the way for many more process improvement experiments.”

“Quality code tends to have small functions, each of which performs one responsibility, thereby making it easy to produce automated tests that check whether the functions work correctly. Large functions, which contain many computer instructions, are notoriously hard to test and prone to defects. I asked the programmers for a printout of the longest function in the codebase.”

“Teams that are aligned on purpose accelerate faster toward achievement.”