After experimenting with different metaphors and models we have settled upon the “Agile Radar” as a tool that we hope will help people understand what Agile is and how “Being Agile” is not the same as just merely “Doing Agile”.

All the diagrams have been released as open source under Creative Commons license here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Agile_Radar.png

Timing: 20 mins including debrief. (10 mins creation of Radars, 10 mins debrief).

Materials: Diagrams presented as slides or drawn as a Before (Blank) and After (Your choice, but hidden).

Flip-chart paper or magic paper so, participants can draw their own Radars as groups or pairs.

Prompts need to be displayed as “Being Agile”, “Mindset”, “Values”, “Principles”, Process & Tools” and so on. These can be in the form of a list on a slide deck or post-its on a wall (make sure they write their own and do not reuse these).

Instructions: The participants are presented with the BLANK Agile Radar and prompted with the displayed at the side (not on the RADAR just yet) attributes of Being Agile at the side. Such as “Being Agile”, “Mindset”, “Values”, “Principles”, Process & Tools” and so on.

They are then asked to draw their own Radars and collaborate on where the attributes should be placed upon the Radar. Then they must actually place them on their own Radars with in 10 mins or less.

Then just before they start reveal that from the core to the edge attributes are “More visible, less powerful” and at the edge “More powerful, less visible”. This must be done just before they start to provide direction.

Learning Points:After they have finished the facilitator can then go through the Radars passing no comment on right or wrong, saying it is peoples personal perspective.

From here the facilitator can coach them with powerful questions on their personal but also valid reasons behind this and afterwards do a reveal to share insightful learnings to all. Asking coaching questions like “What were the reasons for this one here?” and “How do you feel about your results?” or “Now you have heard from others has this changed your views?”. Therefore the participants reveal more learning of “What Agile is?” to themselves.

Then the facilitator points out that while people can have valid different views, they can still collaborate on hard tasks and find ways forward even. So, this is a collaboration learning point here.

Then the facilitator reveals the full diagram (of which 3 options are presented below). And states that this is an industry standard which has been validated by two Agile manifesto authors (Robert C. Martin and Arie van Bennekum) and is also endorsed by ICAgile.

Options:

The optional first diagram is attempting to show the various attributes of Being Agile. Thus “Being Agile” was added to make the statement of intent clear over Doing Agile. “Being Agile” is the central core focus of all the layers regardless of states.

Whereby as our visibility radar reaches further from the core of “Being Agile” we pass through spheres of influence. Where that influence can be “More visible” the easier you can see it, but as we know “less powerful” and then the further its reach of influence travels the “more powerful” it becomes but “Less visible” as it is further away, until we reach the all-encompassing sphere of “Mindset”. Thus the larger the area the more powerful its impact can have.

The abstract concept is reinforced as all-encompassing with the right-hand side showing that the “Mindset” is further in its reach as a Radar scan traversing across all the areas. Hence the concept name “Agile Radar”.

The second diagram is an optional extra. Whereby ShuHaRi is added to show that a Mindset needs to be developed on a journey. However, ShuHaRi has some historical issues and makes the diagram more complicated so it is not for everyone.

An optional third diagram adds new element “Beliefs” which for some bridges the gap between the Agile Values and Mindset. Agile “Beliefs” can include the improvement belief, team belief, people belief and complexity belief.

With all these options available the choice is yours 🙂

In addition to the “Agile Radar” we adapted as additional learning by limiting “Processes” to the singular to entice people to reduce (but not eliminate) a reliance upon “Process” alone.

Authors: Rickard Jones and John Barratt