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Whenever I start learning a new skill, I inevitably face a number of difficulties that lead me to a dead end despite all my enthusiasm. The goal that seems to be so close moves away every time I take another step towards it. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

It actually doesn’t matter what kind of skill you’re trying to acquire. Whether it’s playing the violin, oil painting, picking up a foreign language or writing books like Stephen King, something places obstacles in the way that you don’t know how to overcome.

The first thing I do in a case like this is identify the enemy that prevents me from moving ahead. In most cases, it’s a well-trained bad habit. Each of us has a bunch of them.

If you ever tried to fight against one of your bad habits, you definitely know how hard it is. But it doesn’t mean you have to resign yourself to fate. By identifying your enemies, you take the first step to success. So let’s take this step in Agile together.

Actively spreaded Agile approaches have been capturing new territories for several decades now. They are so effective that every sceptic is not able to escape from trying one of them. However, the way can be full of pitfalls.

It’s pretty common when after attending a couple of training sessions and conferences, and having read a number of books on this topic, you’re starting to believe that it’s a piece of cake to organize such an environment. In practice, it turns out the next Frankenstein, like Agile In Name Only (AINO), ScrumBut or Water-Scrum-Fall.

Let’s take a look at 4 enemies in Agile adoption that I consider the worst ones.

1. “Why?”

We prefer to stay in our comfort zone for as long as possible so that any small change presented on agenda causes us to experience an internal protest against it. Since we naturally don’t like conflicts, we apply some remedy to avoid that change.

The first and the easiest remedy we subconsciously rely on is procrastination. I like occasionally resort to this option telling myself, “Hmm, it’s a really good thing to do but what about starting it on Monday?” The problem here is nothing great can be launched on Monday if you already have it in mind.

Do you remember when one evening you were certain to start running every morning beginning tomorrow and what happened next day? Chances are, you were thinking something like, “It seems to be not a good time to begin. Maybe tomorrow?” Oh, I did it many times in the past. As William Faulkner wrote in the Red Leaves, “Tomorrow is just another name for today.”

If procrastination doesn’t help and the change is unavoidable, our brain is digging deeper and generates an endless series of reasons to keep staying in comfortable conditions a little longer. The most typical argument it has is a reference to the past experience, “Why should I change anything? It always worked fine before and I’m used to do it this way.” Remember, if you hear something similar from your brain or any team member, it’s a signal you faced this “Why?” enemy and now you need to defeat it or it will defeat you.

2. e-communication

Today there is a wide range of apps for communicating between team members so that each team can choose the most appropriate and efficient tool based on the specifics of the workflow. It is very convenient to chat with another person, sitting in a comfortable chair in front of your computer and enjoying a cup of freshly brewed coffee. Thinking there’s nothing wrong with it would be a big mistake. It’s like playing with a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Let’s look at the detail.

Speaking with your friend, you receive something more than just information. You also get an emotional impulse based on intonation, gestures or poses. It’s well known that non-verbal channels play a significant role in our communication.

On the contrary, what happens when you send a message via a messenger? It’s just some text and emotional context is up to your guess and the previous knowledge. Of course, you can attach emojis or something else to make it more alive but it doesn’t help a lot. Even more, the virtual context can be totally different from what the person really feels and how he/she is thinking about the matter. Moreover, it actually leads to decreasing involvement into the project due to a lack of spiritual connection with other team members and the team splits into interest groups (departments) because they feel stronger connection. That’s really sad and unacceptable in Agile.

3. “I am…”

I believe that success of the project depends on how we perceive ourselves within the set of tasks.

There are two fundamentally different approaches to thinking of yourself. First one is something like, “I am [job title] and now I’m participating in Project X” and the second one is “I’m working on Project X and performing duties of a [job title]”.

When team members first associate themselves with the department which they belong to, the level of motivation decreases, support from each other disappears, and the focus on the goal is lost. And this affects the productivity of the whole team.

So the first approach is about being a participant of the project and the second one is about involvement into the project. What should we always try to do is to develop the second mindset.

4. Wrong iteration length

Starting a new project, we need to gather a team with all the necessary skills which entails passing through the stages of the team formation according to Bruce Tuckman: forming, storming, norming, and performing. It’s true even if you have one team moving from one project to another. Why is that? Just because new project always has new rules.

Agile involves splitting the project into a series of iterations and if the above 4 stages have not yet been passed, too short iterations necessarily have a negative impact on integration within the team, attention to the quality and leads to fluctuations in the amount of work in some areas, for example, in case of a developer-tester pair. On the other hand, if iteration is long, team members lose their pace and it will be very difficult to speed up the development process later.