Workshop: Learn to Describe Your Agile Anti-Patterns as a Comic Agilé Strip
Many organizations can increase the return of their investments in going agile by articulating and removing their agile anti-patters, as well as becoming aware of the consequences of having them. Agile antipatterns are sub-par solutions to challenges, and they occur when the intentions of working agile meet the limitations of the organizational reality. When the changes required to go agile are too big or difficult, organizations might take “pragmatic” shortcuts that, on the surface, seem appropriate and sensible, but in the long run can decrease the benefits of the investment—thus, the organization creates agile antipatterns (or “agile debt”).
This workshop teaches the participants to identify, describe, communicate and remove these antipatterns by using the humorous format of Comic Agilé strips.
Examples:
Anti-pattern #1: Product Owners only prioritize business features and not technical enablers and process improvement initiatives. Consequence: Reduced quality of the product and no culture of continuous improvement. Anti-pattern #2: Scrum Masters “do” instead of teaching and coaching. Consequence: The team is ineffective because it doesn’t learn self-management and to grow as a team, but keeps being dependant on the Scrum Master to facilitate it. Anti-pattern #3: Dependencies are not broken, but instead coordinated through a scaling framework. Consequence: It takes longer than needed for each team to deliver value because of the need for cross-team coordination.
Workshop Takeaways
How to identify and articulate the biggest agile anti-patterns of their organizations, inspired by the creative Comic Agilé way of thinking, structuring and presenting points How to communicate agile anti-patterns, and their impact, to decision-makers How to remove the causes of their specific agile anti-patterns
Workshop Disposition
Introduction to the theory behind agile anti-patterns, how they can be identified and prioritized based their impact, and how creating them can be an unconscious choice—combined with loads of the instructor’s own experienced anti-patterns presented humorously through the Comic Agilé format. Workshop where the participants, in groups, identify, break down and articulate their own relevant and actual agile anti-pattern in the form of a four-panel comic strip (no drawing skills needed). Sparring with the instructor and each other on the root causes of the chosen agile anti-patterns, how their organizations can eliminate them, and how to decide which anti-patterns to keep for now.
Target participants
Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches, Release Train Engineers, Agile People Leads/Line Manager and others who work with removing systemic impediments and organizational improvements in an agile context.
