What is an Agile mindset and why it doesn’t matter unless you define it

In any conversation that involves Agile the word mindset comes up, as success with agile requires an agile mindset.

Let’s review what the definition of mindset is:

the established set of attitudes held by someone.

This definition tells you everything you need to know about how Agile has unfolded and why it hasn’t achieved nearly the success it should have. An established set of attitudes held by someone. This means that everyone can have and is entitled to their interpretation of an agile mindset. It doesn’t say an established set of attitudes held by everyone, which is what we are trying to influence with all of the training we do, however, most of the training really surrounds the frameworks that are used to operationalize agile, the mindset here is follow the framework for success, even if the framework is not agile. But be sure you have an agile mindset before you start implementing the framework.

What we are really attempting to do is holistically change the behavior of the people who work in the organization so that they adopt the framework, which implies that they also have an agile mindset.

However, attitudes influence behavior via Cognitive Dissonance, which is described as:

…a desire to maintain consistent attitudes and beliefs can lead to cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is the desire to avoid contradictions in attitudes and behavior.

There is some circular logic there, I’m sure.

So, we have our own mindset of what agile can or should be and due to cognitive dissonance, we want to avoid any contradictions in our attitudes (mindset) and behavior (actions).

What this all tells us is that we will become wrapped up in arguments about what Agile is and become rigid in our application of the frameworks so that we limit and avoid contradictions that the frameworks will offer up when hitting the reality of the organization.

When I was at Disney, we became very Agile from my perspective, where we went from a group that our business partners had little trust in, to a group that eighteen months later was a key part of a major multi-million-dollar initiative. How did we develop an agile mindset? We simply asked one question — Is what we are doing Agile?

And we defined Agile in this way:

· Is what we are doing enabling fast feedback?

· Are we acting positively with this feedback? Did we accept failure as a learning opportunity?

· Are we engaging our business partners?

· Are we transparent, accountable, and predictable with our work?

· Are we delivering quality?

If we answered no to any of these, we tried to find ways to address how we could get better. Some outcomes included:

· Partnering more closely with our UX group.

· Leveraging Discovery/Design sessions to establish our Product/Initiative Roadmap.

· Adopting Scrum/XP delivery and technical expertise.

· Adopting BDD and test automation

An Agile mindset is something that the entire organization must define, from which you can start to focus on increasing business agility. You can use a framework, or you can start small and evolve the organization one step at a time.