New to agile? Give thanks!

Here in the United States we will be celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday, November 26.  If you are currently on an agile team you may want to consider giving thanks a bit earlier!  My thank you list would definitely include:

1. Thanks for the organization allowing us to be successful with an agile development framework.
2. Thanks for giving the team the support needed from all areas of the organization so value is delivered each release.
3. Thanks for giving us the training necessary to be successful with agile.
4. Thanks for daily standups lasting no more than 15 minutes and leaving us all feeling energized that we can meet our iteration commitments.
5. Thanks for iteration demos where the product owners, stakeholders, customer and users can all see what we have created and give us valuable feedback.
6. Thanks for iteration retrospectives where the team really comes together and improves by having an action plan for improvement in the next iteration.
7. Thanks for our Product Owner who always has a well groomed, ranked/prioritized product backlog ready for the team to use at each planning meeting.
8. Thanks for an understanding Scrum Master who uses servant leadership which leads us to success without micromanaging or using command and control to get us there.
9. Thanks for a great team that has all of the necessary skills for project success including developers, testers and others all working as part of a single entity and not having turf wars all the time.
10. Thanks for the team being disciplined enough to actually write the tests first for our Acceptance Test-Driven Development practice.
11. Thanks for iteration planning meetings taking 2 hours or less with the output being an achievable goal each iteration.
12. Thanks for Product Owners, stakeholders, customers and users who are willing to interact with us on a regular basis to help us create great products.
13. Thanks for a team dedicated to meeting their commitments by getting all stories completed and really do it iteration after iteration.
14. Thanks for a burn-down chart that goes top-left to bottom-right and an accepted story chart which goes bottom-left to top-right without large staggered steps in either.
15. Thanks for managers, directors, vice-presidents and others in the chain of command who pay attention to macro metrics rather than micro metrics.

Oh, you don’t have all those things to be thankful for?  Sorry, maybe after Thanksgiving it is time to take a look at how your team is really doing with agile.

Until next time I’ll be Making Agile a Reality^® for my clients by helping them be thankful for everything on this list and many, many more!