Baby Steps
Taking baby steps is often advocated for peoples adoption of Agile.
If you’re coming from a waterfall background there is a lot to take on when becoming Agile. To truly become Agile you cannot just blindly follow certain practices, you need to understand them so you can apply them appropriately, if you try to adopt all at once you’ll overload yourself, you won’t understand what’s having what effect, so yes, start by taking some baby steps but….
A few things I’d like to point out about babies:
- they grow up
- within a couple of years they’ll be walking, indeed running
- when learning to walk they are bold, almost reckless
- yes, sometimes they fall over, sometime they even hurt themselves, but they learn from it, stand up and try again
I also worry that by just constantly taking small steps you loose your point of reference, that every small step moves you such a short distance you cannot tell whether it’s moving you to success or to failure. Don’t be a frog in a slowly warmed pan of water, be the frog who is thrown in, you’ll be able to tell if it’s boiling and jump straight back out.