The Olympics brought many things to mind not least whether the organisers were going to wheel Paul McCartney out for a closing ceremony encore. Thankfully they didn't.
On a performance level it was interesting to note the British cycling team's response to questions regarding their continued dominance in the velodrome. Any other teams looking for a silver-bullet solution to improved performance are unlikely to find it. The success, it seems, comes from lots of small reasons and the accumulation of marginal gains that comes with them.
There's never a shortage of people that believe there's a silver bullet solution for increased productivity and improved performance in software development. These people pronounce that being 'Agile' will lead to better and faster results. Rather ironically perhaps, it tends to be the same people who are least able to explain what this actually means or how it might work. I see it as akin to a cycling coach who urges his team to train 'smarter' without any further direction or insight.
So why do so many people continue to be aligned with that view? Perhaps it's because that tends to be the message pumped out by one size fits all Agile consultants? Perhaps it's because they don't fully understand the complexities of software development? Most probably it's some kind of combination of the two - a lack of understanding of both the problem and the proposed solution.
If we accept that this lack of understanding exists then what can be done about it? Perhaps first, as the Agile community, we need to accept some responsibility for failing to effectively communicate what Agile is about. With all the hyped up literature it's maybe not surprising that some see it as a one-stop-shop for guaranteed successs. Others see it as some sort of mysterious science whilst struggling to identify what it actually means in a practical sense.
The truth is that improved performance in software development doesn't come from an overarching theoretical directive. Moreover, it comes from actual and targeted improvements at a more granular and practical level. If we apply the concept of marginal gains then we can propose an overall shift towards a better way of working, realised from the manifestation of lower level improvements in an array of areas.
The idea of improving in lots of different areas is nothing new, indeed it's at the heart of Agile. We can look towards the manifesto and the twelve principles of Agile development for the areas in which we might want to focus improvement. What is new is the suggestion that we can adopt a more mainstream language to better communicate how Agile improvement works.
With the concept fresh in people's minds and seemingly easy to understand maybe now is the ideal time to start talking about 'marginal gains' as the driver of Agile process improvement. Perhaps the familiarity with this concept can help demystify what being Agile means and how teams can get there. In turn this demystification might help move wider understanding away from the silver-bullet solution and towards a practical understanding of Agile application?
Who knows. What is clear to me is that as we strive to be as transparent and as open as possible within the Agile frameworks that we adopt we should also strive to be as clear as possible about the development approach in general. Agile; it isn't a silver bullet and it isn't a mysterious science. Moreover it's a practical approach to development focused on continuous improvement through marginal gains.
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