Being Agile Without Fitting a Mould

A few weeks ago I started helping out at one of the most Agile tech companies I’ve ever seen.

I looked into their current state. On the surface, they use a mix of Scrum and Kanban ideas that wouldn’t pass muster by the standards of either approach. Some practices are done loosely, while others are absent.

And yet…

A thoroughly people-first, team-everywhere philosophy drives everything they do, with excellent servant leadership. Their methods implement — intentionally and explicitly — a host of Agile principles. For example:

Their four dev teams are truly able to work on any initiative on the roadmap (this is an Agile ideal that I’ve rarely seen implemented).
They pull work, rather than push it, and generally have low WIP even though numerical WIP limits are not observed.
They are removing significant amounts of technical debt. In some cases, that’s in the form of rewriting modules, but they’re producing clean code fully covered by excellent unit tests.
Collaboration is high on their radar. My favourite experience there: the VP Eng and VP Product pair up all the time — including in the many meetings with me.

The company is successful and growing fast, and the executives wanted to increase product development’s Agile maturity. Yet, most people I spoke with didn’t realize how Agile they actually were. One obvious reason: their implementation doesn’t look anything like popular templates. A less obvious reason: it appears loose, but it’s not; rather, it’s informal and light.

I’ve seen this at other high-calibre engineering cultures: people expect and appreciate professionalism, but push back on process that feels rigid (they include Scrum in this category). This company’s story exemplifies the path: servant leadership that implements an intentional mindset with minimal process.