Magic Agile Fairy Dust and the hardest bit of Agile

There is no such thing as Magic Agile Fairy Dust. Neither me or anyone else can come to your company and sprinkle my magic dust and fix all your problems. There, I said it.

Its more complicated than that, there is no out-of-the-box solution. I can help you, you can use some tools, some methods but it involves change.

That change involves not doing some things. Changing to Agile involves subtraction as well as addition. It is not enough to just add Sprints, stand-up meetings and what not, you have to stop doing some things.

And thats the hard bit. I can teach you the basics of “Agile” in a few hours if I need to. But it takes a lot longer to help you unlearn what you did before. Unlearn behaviors, assumptions, ideas and ways of working. You can’t do that in a few hours in a classroom, it has to be done in the workplace and over time. Thats what Agile Coaching is for.

The only thing that comes close to Agile Fairy Dust is Test Driven Development (automated) and Automated Acceptance Testing. You can add those things and start to see a difference. Not immediately but in less time than you think.