Primer on the Purpose of OpenAgile

Concepts and information about the Purpose of OpenAgile
Introduction: Purpose of the primer on this topic; goal or problem that it addresses

The Purpose of OpenAgile
To create an environment in which people are free to express their true nature and capacities to contribute to the betterment of their organization.

The Learning Manifesto
Learning is the key that unlocks human capacity. Learning can help us improve our products and services, our processes and tools and our interactions with the people around us. The learning we want is:


 * Systematic vs. Ad Hoc
 * Deep vs. Shallow
 * Continuous vs. Sporadic
 * Applied vs. Theoretical
 * Shared vs. Hoarded

And in order to do learning with these qualities, we recognize that Truthfulness is the foundation and required for progress and success.

Quotes
"We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop." - Mother Teresa

"All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

"An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

"All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree." - Albert Einstein

"Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty." - Albert Einstein

"Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life." - Buddha

"All major religious traditions carry basically the same message, that is love, compassion and forgiveness the important thing is they should be part of our daily lives." - Dalai Lama

"Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them." - Dalai Lama

"All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." - Winston Churchill

"All great achievements require time." - Maya Angelou

Axiom, story or example
A Case Study – OpenAgile at Berteig Consulting

At Berteig Consulting, we start our one-week Cycle off with a Cycle Planning meeting first thing Monday morning. This meeting is time-boxed to three hours. We work with a loose framework of approximately one hour for Reflections, one hour for Learning and one hour for Planning – these are not strict time-boxes.

The Process Facilitator role is dynamic. At the beginning of the Engagement Meeting the team identifies who will fill the role of Process Facilitator for the Cycle. All team members have the opportunity to act in this role and as a result of this practice, facilitation of process is now being taken on more and more by the team itself and less and less by the designated individual. Still, for the Engagement and Progress meetings specifically, the designated Process Facilitator generally takes a more prominent role.

As team members we are comfortable reflecting openly and are confident that our contributions to the meetings will be valued, honoured and respected by the rest of the team. This does not mean that reflecting together is always easy. Quite the contrary – often, the team grapples with difficult issues that have built up over the last Cycle or even several Cycles. Consistent with the reality of constant change, there are always new obstacles that present themselves to the team. Reflection helps us to understand these issues, so that we can understand them by focusing on Learning, and then endeavour to move beyond them through action items generated through Planning.

But the Engagement Meeting isn't only for dealing with issues. There are often substantial successes recognized through Reflection just as there is often satisfaction, exuberance and celebration generated through Learning. Victories and other forms of good news often materialize as New Work Queue items representing substantially rewarding work for the team in the new Cycle.

The team environment is one of love, respect and openness - a functional family. Why is this so? Perhaps this is because of the commitment of individual team members to the principles of OpenAgile. Every team member is responsible for the team's success and works diligently to uphold the standards of a high-performance team.

There is no doubt in anyone's mind that we are truly a team. This is probably the most valuable attribute of Berteig Consulting and it really cannot be over-emphasized or under-estimated. A team can only be a team if all the individual members are dedicated to the coherence, integrity, unity and learning of the team and constantly and diligently striving as individuals to contribute to the organic growth of the team's capacity. If just one individual is lacking in any of these, there can be no team.

In the book “The Wisdom of Teams”, the authors observe that one of the common attributes of high-performance teams is the friendships of team members that extend beyond the work of the actual team. In other words, people who work together on high-performance teams take a genuine interest in each other's lives and participate in activities together outside of work.

For Berteig Consulting, this is an understatement. The activities of the team members outside the team room resemble those of an extended family. We visit each other, confide in each other, help each other talk through difficult personal situations – we even all work as volunteers together on community development projects.

References (links)

 * Berteig Consulting
 * Wisdom of Teams

Draft for Publication
OpenAgile is a value delivery system. It is an approach to doing work that is both practical and principled. Anyone doing work that needs to be organized, effective, and quality conscious can use OpenAgile. OpenAgile enhances the ability of individuals, teams, and organizations to deliver value to their stakeholders by developing human capacity, improving processes, and, most importantly, encouraging rapid and deep learning. Proven benefits include helping to increase productivity and quality, rapidly responding to change, and reducing costs. We hope that you will find OpenAgile a useful, exciting, and revolutionary approach to working.

Growing agile

When you read about an agile method, it is described in a fixed way. However, when it is put in to practice, you realize agile is dynamic. While many agile methods are openly learn-able, the process of contributing back to them is very restricted. There are all sorts of things that are learned in an organization or a team that don't get contributed back to the method itself. This means the dynamic knowledge of agile, which is constantly growing, doesn't get broadly shared or applied.

OpenAgile intends to change this by helping everyone benefit from the best learning that is out there about how to do/be agile. OpenAgile provides a structure for individuals, teams, and organizations around the world to learn about agility, practice it, and channel it back into the community so that people can actually benefit from the learning taking place.