What’s thinking?

Thinking is an automatic process during which the human mind gathers, classifies, and processes empirical data. The empirical data are collected by the senses for the mind to process them. It’s impossible to stop thinking. The more you try not to think of a white horse, the more you actually think of it. Even when we’re asleep, our mind still processes what we previously experienced, and we don’t have to be aware of it. Agile thinking is one of approaches to thinking.

What’s Agile thinking?

As it was pointed out in the beginning, thinking an Agile way is not a new concept. Both the Agile mindset and traditional ways of thinking are based on the common sense. However, there is a slight difference in approach to decision-making. ‘Traditional’ way of thinking seems to put more pressure on the means rather than the goal we want to reach. A person who thinks ‘Agile’ way doesn’t care how to reach the Goal. For instance, say you’re going to give a PowerPoint presentation, but it turns out there is no Internet connection in the office. Then, instead of trying to have the Net access back, you simply decide to present it on board. The goal is achieved. “Agile” thinking is Goal-oriented. You’re looking for new solutions and opportunities to reach your goals despite difficult circumstances.

Agile thinking is all about discovery

The language is an instrument we all play. The problem is that due to various experiences, we sometimes tend to miss what other person really means. In other words, the message conveyed sometimes differs from the interpreted one. Hence, it sometimes happens that the client reviewing and using their product first time says it’s not what they really wanted. Apart from communication gaps and language imperfections, another reason why communication fails is a complex environment we work in. The client doesn’t really know what their product has to be like until they ‘experience’ it in a real situation. We don’t know what problems we might encounter on our way – it’s sometimes referred to as “the unknown unknows”. Agile means we deliver the product as often as possible (even if it’s not finished) to get the feedback from the client. That way, we reveal part of the unknown, step by step.

“Why” first to get to “what”

To better understand the product we’re going to produce, if we think the Agile way, we would rather like to know what the product is for. We try to learn how it’s going change the client’s world, how it will influence their life. In order to do so, the product comes on the market so that we could learn whether we’re moving in the right direction. As time passes by, we learn more and more about the product (Cone of uncertainty). Plus, frequent releases make the risk decrease.

We now do things that really matter now

Another feature of Agile thinking is we do the right things. Things that have little or no business value aren’t the right things to do. Imagine you’re a barber. How do you think you clients will benefit from reporting on haircuts you give? Does it make quality increase? I don’t think it does.

Planning over a plan

Agile as such means to be flexible, adaptive to circumstances. It doesn’t matter how we do something as long as the goal is achieved. With Agile we reveal new ways, possibilities, opportunities.

We use our mind to get it right

If we know the answer to the “why”, get the client’s feedback, adapt new solutions in the form of experiments, then we use our own mind to sort everything out. That allows us to learn and learn! It’s a learning environment we create. A lot of people think an Agile way, which they aren’t even aware of. In my opinion, we can’t do “Agile”. We can be “Agile” or think “Agile”. Scrum, XP, Kanban and a couple of more was created to implement that type of thinking.