This is the perfect moment for reinvention. You know,
sometimes when I have a cold like I have now, but also when you get
a little tired of doing podcast because the the sheer
mountain of perfection that you expect out of yourself can obviously slow
you down and keep you from wanting to do the thing at all. So in
the spirit of what I teach in the forge and around it, my agile practice,
of course, I might as well just put a mic up anywhere and just go.
So set something up. We'll talk about things that I'm thinking about, that I'm writing
about. And this week, it's all about reinvention. There's
no question that things have changed in the past 4 years. We had a
pandemic. We have completely changed the way we work and the way we
connect. We've completely changed our approaches and
our thinking as to what the good life is. We realize that
life is not work and it's time to do something more meaningful.
It's time to get rid of our attachment to possessions and not think
about those things as much, but rather what we wanna do, who we wanna
spend time with. And everyone's still scratching their head.
You know, in the same moment, agile has gone through
a little bit of a decline. So we know for a fact that, you know,
I've cited the stats many times that spending is down not only in
agile services and products, but agile training, agile conferences.
Everyone's tightening their belts. And I feel there's an element of blown
trust behind that, but you can hear me talk about that in a 100 different
episodes. What I'm here to talk about today is where is the opportunity in
that? And the opportunity is to recreate and
reinvent what we do and how we do it. It's
time for a rebuild. Things were bad,
things got broken, but the time is ripe for
change. There's no rules right now. Not that we want
rules, but if we were gonna make rules, you could set them as easily as
anybody else. What is agile now? Here's what's for
sure. You're never going back to the gold rush days. Remember
them? What if you had the word scrum master or agile coach anywhere
near your name? You could pretty much write your own paycheck. We
know the landscape has changed, and we know that it hasn't necessarily changed
for the better. So you can never go back. And we really
shouldn't want to ever go back. But here's the thing, if it's all
broken and all confusing, it's a green field to reinvent
what we do. And right now, you have the
opportunity to live life by your own design.
Here's why. Most of the agilists I know are sitting around
waiting and following. They're waiting to meet someone who's gonna tell
them what to do next. Where's the next opportunity? Where is our industry going?
What is the next great certification that I'm supposed to get?
But if you're not a follower, you could instead
lead. You could help redefine the value and the
virtue of what we do. But wouldn't that be cool?
That's like when you go back to your hometown, and they've torn down the church,
and they've gutted the school and they've widened the roads, nothing will ever
be the way you remember it. It'll never be the way it
was. And clinging to that past is
what causes us pain. World's always changing. There's kids
now who are like 30 years old who don't remember
a world where you could go through a security checkpoint at an airport and leave
your belt and your shoes on. In fact, there's people who've just
graduated from school, who are starting their careers having
never worked in the pre pandemic conditions that we're all trying
so hard to go back to. Look. You can't put a cork back
in what has happened. You can't stuff AI
or remote work or cloud or any of those things back in the bottle.
This is a time of great revolution, and people are a little bit
afraid. They're a little bit confused, but the prize
goes to the first movers. And that, my friends, as
Agilist, is what we do. So take a moment to mourn the way it
used to be if you want, but you gotta do something. See,
here's what a lot of people don't get. Loyalty doesn't mean anything. The fact that
you were a valuable agile coach 5 years ago, and everyone at
the company loved you and they were happy to renew your contract every 12
months, that doesn't mean anything. The system doesn't
care about you. Your loyalty won't be met
with loyalty in return. You gotta pay for your existence
somehow. You have to keep generating new value. Keep reinventing
yourself and finding ways to justify your existence
by emerging different. Things will now
change because they have to, and because they
can. We can be bold and reinvent what we
do, and how we do it. All based on a compelling
why. A pause, a break, is
an intervention, a moment of reckoning and
reflection and recreation. The things that we used to do
that were so comfortable are comfortable because they were
habit. It was familiar. It was safe. It was approved, but that doesn't
mean it was good for us. There are some habits that
we should introduce or strengthen, and there are some that we should break
up with. Let them fall to the ground and shatter like a glass bowling
ball. When you drop a habit, you reclaim
power. You can insert new things that are more aligned with
the present. Healthier, more beneficial.
Whether that means it's time to change careers, time to build a side
hustle, where you can do agile on your own terms. For let's say, a smaller
company, who truly values what you do and thinks the way that you
do. It might mean that you reorient how you spend your time and your
money, Or, it could mean you create a brand new job title for yourself.
Stop going through the same doors as everyone else. The ones that you
were faithful to yesterday. Don't kneel in the pews
among the masses because you could find a new way to solve
problems for people and businesses. You can swim against the
current. Look. If you're gonna sweat and crawl every
day to keep your head above water, it might as well
be for cause. It might as well be for change.
Don't be a servant to the rules. Make new rules. And you
might be saying, well, this breaks what the industry expects of me.
But remember, the industry doesn't care about you. They'll drop you in a
minute. Look. It's scary because none of this
has been done before. There is no proven stable
ground, but it's worth it. Take my
word for it. We could set the bar higher. We could
rewrite what agile means and how it gets used. And in
upcoming episodes, I'll tell you about some of the experiments that I'm doing
that maybe you wanna try too. I've done some really exciting things just in the
past 6 months alone. But the good news that I wanna bring to you
is that I validated that the need is there. If
I no longer wanna define myself as someone who brings speed or
quality or consistency to a software delivery practice, I don't
have to. Because people are asking for very
different stuff. But here's the cool thing. Agile is
about helping people experiment and discover and validate
in unknown territory. And I can think of no
more uncertain terrain than what we're seeing here in 2024.
This should be what we're awesome at, but it's up
to us to create a new definition that's in line with the new
world that we're facing. This is our greatest job. I
hope this inspired you. If you like this episode, don't forget to share it with
your friends. If you got any questions or comments, go ahead and email me at
contact at badassagile.com. And until next
time, stay badass.