The Agile Manifesto For Complex Work

Work team collaborating in an office.When Agile Learning Labs started in 2007, our focus was helping organizations find “a better way to better software.” We taught and coached software product development organizations how to apply scrum and related agile practices. We used the Manifesto For Agile Software Development as a reference for what it means to develop software in an agile way.

Today, we often work with organizations that do other kinds of complex work: marketing, research, bio-tech, even architecture. What would the Agile Manifesto look like if it was generalized to describe doing any kind of complex work in an agile way? With the help of participants in my regular online open office hours, I’ve generalized the values and principles from The Manifesto For Agile Software Development, so that they might better apply to any type of complex work.
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Unlock Your Team’s Potential with Working Agreements

A row of people sit on a wall with arms around each other as a team

Photo by Duy Pham

Every team is unique, with its own dynamics, challenges, and potential. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to helping a team thrive. Yet, when it comes to building high-performing teams, there’s one practice I recommend every time: creating team working agreements.

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Improve Your Scrum Implementation with Our Scrum Scorecard

Health metrics displayed on a heart monitor

Photo by Joshua Chehov

While the effectiveness of scrum is made up of much more than what a scorecard can show, having some criteria to start conversations about how well scrum is working on your team can be helpful. For this reason, we’ve created the Scrum Scorecard. Use this Scorecard to assess your team’s implementation of scrum and identify areas of improvement.

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Team Health Assessment

A stethoscope hangs on a mesh wall before a setting sun

Photo by Oluwaseyi Johnson

Healthy teams are effective teams that meet goals, produce high-quality work, and delight customers.

When we measure team health, we step away from these outcomes of the team – however valuable they may be – and instead look at the team itself. What environment are they working in? How do the team members feel about the work they’re doing? How do they feel about each other?

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Facilitation Technique: Validation

A poster for validation reads, "We hear you."Validation is when the facilitator acknowledges the validity of a participant’s position. The facilitator is not necessarily endorsing the viewpoint, but simply recognizing that the viewpoint is reasonable and understandable for the participant to hold.

It can be tricky for a facilitator to acknowledge thoughts of participants and help them feel heard without agreeing with what the participant is saying. Validation takes practice and can help earn the trust of your team when done well.
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Testing Product Hypotheses Before Implementation

We’ve described how to use product hypotheses to measure the value of what a scrum team has built. We’ve also explored how to test product hypotheses more quickly by only building a minimum viable product (MVP). Now let’s look at ways to test those product hypotheses before the scrum team builds anything, using product discovery techniques.
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Testing Product Hypotheses With A Minimal Viable Product (MVP)

Image of blocks showing the letters MVPA previous article described how a scrum team could measure the value delivered by completed product backlog items. The approach is based on creating a product hypothesis for each item, describing how the value will be measured. By implementing an item (user story) and then measuring the results, the team is conducting an experiment to validate their beliefs about the value of the item.

A minimal viable product (MVP) allows us to implement less than the full feature, and still gather data about how valuable users find it. While an MVP is often used to test an entire product idea, the approach can also be used to test new feature areas of an existing product. An MVP is a simple implementation that allows us to gather real data from our users. Read the full article…

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