Agile Planning Quotes

But I should caution that if you seek to plot out all your moves before you make them—if you put your faith in slow, deliberative planning in the hopes it will spare you failure down the line—well, you’re deluding yourself. For one thing, it’s easier to plan derivative work—things that copy or repeat something already out there. So if your primary goal is to have a fully worked out, set-in-stone plan, you are only upping your chances of being unoriginal.

Strategic thinking enables boards to anticipate and adapt to disruptions, ensuring the organization remains agile and resilient.

The problem with most strategic planning processes is they are not designed to create strategy. They are designed to create consistency and predictability.

The more detailed we made our plans, the longer our cycle times became

To be uncertain is to be uncomfortable, but to be certain is to be ridiculous.” —Chinese proverb

What someone may lack in talent can be more than made up for in self-motivation, self-direction, and follow-through.

No plan survives contact with the enemy." —Field Marshal Helmuth Graf von Moltke

Agile Manifesto.” It declared the following values: people over processes; products that actually work over documenting what that product is supposed to do; collaborating with customers over negotiating with them; and responding to change over following a plan. Scrum is the framework I built to put those values into practice. There is no methodology.

The surest way to ensure career extinction is to resist change and adaptation.

Do you want a level of income to fit your lifestyle or a lifestyle to fit your income level?

I am suggesting that we don’t put the “income” cart before the “contentment” horse.

A traditional project manager focuses on following the plan with minimal changes, whereas an agile leader focuses on adapting successfully to inevitable changes.

When project leaders focus on delivery, they add value to projects. When they focus on planning and control, they tend to add overhead.

Agile Project Management is an execution-biased model, not a planning-and-control-biased model.

Risk is managed not through cautious planning but through bold experiments combined with frequent inspection, feedback, and adaptation.

Complexity kills. It sucks the life out of developers, it makes products difficult to plan, build, and test.” —Ray Ozzie, CTO, Microsoft Corporation

stress can be a real monster you have to vanquish from your team. And one of the main ways to do this is by ensuring that you plan your project in a very sustainable way, from the very beginning.

Summary of Scrum vs Kanban Similarities: - Both are Lean and Agile - Both use pull scheduling - Both limit WIP - Both use transperency to drive process improvement - Both focus on delivering releasable software and often - Both are based on self-organizing teams - Both require breaking the work into pieces. - In both, the release plan is continuously optimized based on empirical data (velocity/lead time)

You’ve good speed and agility, and endurance enough. But you’ve no killer in the blood, and so you’ll always be bested.” Iona rubbed her butt. “I never planned on killing anyone.” “Plans change,” Branna pointed out. “Fix those flowers now, as it’s your rump that crushed them.

I noticed a bumper sticker that said, simply, "gravity works." yes it does. Rock climbers know this and plan for it. So do agile coaches. I use this metaphor to illustrate that, in our physical environment, somethings are simply taken as a given. Constant. Always present. Undeniable. So, too, in our work environment.

a good set of questions to determine whether a project leader—or even an individual contributor—has an agile mindset might be, "In what specific ways and with what practices do you focus on value first and constraints last?" "In what specific ways and with what practices do you manage teams rather than tasks?" "In what specific ways and with what practices do you adapt to change rather than conform to plans?" Try these out in your organization to get a feel for your agile maturity.

An adaptive development process has a different character from an optimizing one. Optimizing reflects a basic prescriptive Plan-Design-Build lifecycle. Adapting reflects an organic, evolutionary Envision-Explore-Adapt lifecycle. An adaptive approach begins not with a single solution, but with multiple potential solutions (experiments). It explores and selects the best by applying a series of fitness tests (actual product features or simulations subjected to acceptance tests) and then adapting to feedback.

Recommended Reading Mike Cohn in his book User Stories Applied provides insights and details on user stories, including how to write them and their characteristics. His book Agile Estimating and Planning provides guidance on prioritizing user stories. Luke Hohmann in his book Innovation Games: Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play describes 12 innovation games. The Definitive Guide to Getting Your Budget Approved by Johannes Ritter and Frank Röttgers provides a systematic guide for creating a quantifying the economic value for projects.

A second reason for declining to provide a date for superintelligent AI is that there is no clear threshold that will be crossed. Machines already exceed human capabilities in some areas. Those areas will broaden and deepen, and it is likely that there will be superhuman general knowledge systems, superhuman biomedical research systems, superhuman dexterous and agile robots, superhuman corporate planning systems, and so on well before we have a completely general superintelligent AI system. These “partially superintelligent” systems will, individually and collectively, begin to pose many of the same issues that a generally intelligent system would.

Lake Natron resided in northern Tanzania near an active volcano known as Ol Doinyo Lengai. It was part of the reason the lake had such unique characteristics. The mud had a curious dark grey color over where Jack had been set up for observation, and he noted that there was now an odd-looking mound of it to the right of one of the flamingo’s nests. He zoomed in further and further, peering at it, and then realized what he was actually seeing. The dragon had crouched down beside the nests and blended into the mud. From snout to tail, Jack calculated it had to be twelve to fourteen feet long. Its wings were folded against its back, which had small spines running down the length to a spiky tail. It had a fin with three prongs along the base of the skull and webbed feet tipped with sharp black talons. He estimated the dragon was about the size of a large hyena. It peered up at its prey with beady red eyes, its black forked tongue darting out every few seconds. Its shoulder muscles bunched and its hind legs tensed. Then it pounced. The dark grey dragon leapt onto one of flamingoes atop its nest and seized it by the throat. The bird squawked in distress and immediately beat its wings, trying to free itself. The others around them took to the skies in panic. The dragon slammed it into the mud and closed its jaws around the animal’s throat, blood spilling everywhere. The flamingo yelped out its last breaths and then finally stilled. The dragon dropped the limp carcass and sniffed the eggs before beginning to swallow them whole one at a time. “Holy shit,” Jack muttered. “Have we got a visual?” “Oh, yeah. Based on the size, the natives and the conservationists were right to be concerned. It can probably wipe out a serious number of wildlife in a short amount of time based on what I’m seeing. There’s only a handful of fauna that can survive in these conditions and it could make mincemeat out of them.” “Alright, so what’s the plan?” “They told me it’s very agile, which is why their attempts to capture it haven’t worked. I’m going to see if it responds to any of the usual stimuli. So far, they said it doesn’t appear to be aggressive.” “Copy that. Be careful, cowboy.” “Ten-four.” Jack glanced down at his utility belt and opened the pocket on his left side, withdrawing a thin silver whistle. He put it to his lips and blew for several seconds. Much like a dog whistle, Jack couldn’t hear anything. But the dragon’s head creaked around and those beady red eyes locked onto him. Jack lowered the whistle and licked his dry lips. “If I were in a movie, this would be the part where I said, ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this.’” The dragon roared, its grey wings extending out from its body, and then flew straight at him.

When applying agile practices at the portfolio level, similar benefits accrue: • Demonstrable results—Every quarter or so products, or at least deployable pieces of products, are developed, implemented, tested, and accepted. Short projects deliver chunks of functionality incrementally. • Customer feedback—Each quarter product managers review results and provide feedback, and executives can view progress in terms of working products. • Better portfolio planning—Portfolio planning is more realistic because it is based on deployed whole or partial products. • Flexibility—Portfolios can be steered toward changing business goals and higher-value projects because changes are easy to incorporate at the end of each quarter. Because projects produce working products, partial value is captured rather than being lost completely as usually happens with serial projects that are terminated early. • Productivity—There is a hidden productivity improvement with agile methods from the work not done. Through constant negotiation, small projects are both eliminated and pared down.

Plan-driven development works well if you are applying it to problems that are well defined, predictable, and unlikely to undergo any significant change. The problem is that most product development efforts are anything but predictable, especially at the beginning. So, while a plan-driven process gives the impression of an orderly, accountable, and measurable approach, that impression can lead to a false sense of security. After all, developing a product rarely goes as planned. For many, a plan-driven, sequential process just makes sense, understand it, design it, code it, test it, and deploy it, all according to a well-defined, prescribed plan. There is a belief that it should work. If applying a plan-driven approach doesn’t work, the prevailing attitude is that we must have done something wrong. Even if a plan-driven process repeatedly produces disappointing results, many organizations continue to apply the same approach, sure that if they just do it better, their results will improve. The problem, however, is not with the execution. It’s that plan-driven approaches are based on a set of beliefs that do not match the uncertainty inherent in most product development efforts.

Heracles was the strongest man who ever lived. No human, and almost no immortal creature, ever subdued him physically. With uncomplaining patience he bore the trials and catastrophes that were heaped upon him in his turbulent lifetime. With his strength came, as we have seen, a clumsiness which, allied to his apocalyptic bursts of temper, could cause death or injury to anyone who got in the way. Where others were cunning and clever, he was direct and simple. Where they planned ahead he blundered in, swinging his club and roaring like a bull. Mostly these shortcomings were more endearing than alienating. He was not, as the duping Atlas and the manipulation of Hades showed, entirely without that quality of sense, gumption and practical imagination that the Greeks called 'nous'. He possessed saving graces that more than made up for his exasperating faults. His sympathy for others and willingness to help those in distress was bottomless, as were the sorrow and shame that overcame him when he made mistakes and people got hurt. He proved himself prepared to sacrifice his own happiness for years at a stretch in order to make amends for the (usually unintentional) harm he caused. His childishness, therefore, was offset by a childlike lack of guile or pretence as well as a quality that is often overlooked when we catalogue the virtues: fortitude -the capacity to endure without complaint. For all his life he was persecuted, plagued and tormented by a cruel, malicious and remorseless deity pursuing a vendetta which punished him for a crime for which he could be in no way held responsible- his birth. No labour was more Heraclean than the labour of being Heracles. In his uncomplaining life of pain and persistence, in his compassion and desire to do the right thing, he showed, as the American classicist and mythographer Edith Hamilton put it, 'greatness of soul'. Heracles may not have possessed the pert agility and charm of Perseus and Bellerophon, the intellect of Oedipus, the talent for leadership of Jason or the wit and imagination of Theseus, but he had a feeling heart that was stronger and warmer than any of theirs.

Everyone is dispensable but some are more dispensable than others.

Labor saving devices have destroyed many jobs but have given rise to many new ones. It simply is up to us if we are going to resist or embrace the future.

The construct of retirement is dubious at best and a farce at worst. Expectations contrary to this are to be dashed.

Adaptability is the name of the game; if you understand that you must now be adaptable and flexible, you will find a way to succeed in your career. If not, you will succumb to job market pressures.

In the name of all that is holy, please consider the wages of a particular profession before you select that degree plan.

Whereas previous generations had to face some unpredictability, current generations are facing unprecedented levels of instability.

Finding a job that is a good fit is as much about you selecting the right company as it is about them selecting the right candidate.

Can’t we do better with Applicant Tracking System (ATS) software?

When presented with an open door in your job, drive a Mack truck through it.

There remains a natural career progression even though the tougher job climate seeks to delay it.

Our career mantra should be learn, relearn, repeat.

We don’t deserve our job. Period.

It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new system.  For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institutions and merely lukewarm defenders in those who would gain by the new ones.” Nicholi Machiavelli in The Prince 1513 A.D.

Because the estimate for each feature is made relative to the estimates for other features, it does not matter if our estimates are correct, a little incorrect, or a lot incorrect. What matters is that they are consistent.

Sprint planning is not about planning new work for each two-week cycle. Most of the time, we are planning tasks for projects that are currently underway. For example, we may have planned a webinar four weeks ago and during this meeting, we are planning to make more progress on the webinar. When a task, like a webinar, will take longer than one sprint to complete, we use an epic issue type.

In the agile world, success doesn't mean knowing exactly what the plan is before you begin. Success instead means having enough money left over to try an emergent opportunity after the deliberate plan has failed.

Individuals should be given every incentive possible to work as a team. If the team’s throughput is increased by my helping someone else, that’s what I should do. Team velocity matters; individual velocity doesn’t.

Sunset. He had promised her until sunset. “If something goes wrong, we need to get her out.” Miles Dorrington looked thoughtful. “I say, we could raise the Jolly Roger and storm the fort as pirates. While they’re panicking, you sneak in and retrieve Jane.” “Too many cannons,” said Jack tersely. “You’ll be blown to splinters before we can get inside. Next?” Lizzy raised her crossbow. “I could—” “No,” said Jack and his father in unison. When Jack had finished glaring at his father, he said, “Jane and I discussed this. If she’s not back by sundown, Lord Richard and I”—Jack nodded to the blond man, who nodded back—“will go after her disguised as dragoons.” Lord Richard quickly took charge. “I’ll see that my men acquire the relevant uniforms.” “No,” said Jack’s new stepmother. “No?” Jack looked narrowly at his stepmother. “What do you propose, then?” His stepmother paced decisively down the deck. “Richard”—Lord Richard leaped agilely out of range of her parasol—“will stay and mind the Bien-Aimée . If Jane isn’t back by sundown”—Jack’s stepmother regarded him imperiously—“you and I will go after her.” “Gwen is very good at rappelling down walls,” said Jack’s father, looking at his bride with gooey eyes. “Up them, too.” “We’re not rappelling,” said Jack. If there was anything he hated, it was rappelling. It was as showy and useless as swinging through windows on ropes. “We’re going through the door.” “I’ve known that girl since she was born.” His stepmother stalked towards him, parasol point glinting. “I’ve protected her from more assailants than you’ve had hot suppers. If you go, I go.” “How lovely,” said Lady Henrietta brightly. “You can get to know each other.” Miles Dorrington prudently lifted his wife by the waist and deposited her out of parasol range. “We don’t know that she’ll need rescuing,” said Jack, staring down his new stepmother. “The plan might go as planned.” His stepmother snorted. “With the Gardener? I’ll go get my pistols.” And she departed, leaving Jack with a sick feeling at the pit of his stomach as he tried not to contemplate what the Gardener might be doing with Jane right now.

Some of the same forces have come to bear in the business world, where many companies in thriving talent-dependent industries embraced a new workplace ethos in which hierarchies were softened and office floor plans were reengineered to break down the walls that once kept management and talent separated. One emerging school of thought, popular among technology companies in Silicon Valley, is that organizations should adopt “flat” structures, in which management layers are thin or even nonexistent. Star employees are more productive, the theory goes, and more likely to stay, when they are given autonomy and offered a voice in decision-making. Some start-ups have done away with job titles entirely, organizing workers into leaderless “self-managing teams” that report directly to top executives. Proponents of flatness say it increases the speed of the feedback loop between the people at the top of the pyramid and the people who do the frontline work, allowing for a faster, more agile culture of continuous improvement. Whether that’s true or not, it has certainly cleared the way for top executives to communicate directly with star employees without having to muddle through an extra layer of management. As I watched all this happen, I started to wonder if I was really writing a eulogy. Just as I was building a case for the crucial value of quiet, unglamorous, team-oriented, workmanlike captains who inhabit the middle strata of a team, most of the world’s richest sports organizations, and even some of its most forward-thinking companies, seemed to be sprinting headlong in the opposite direction.

Chuck Rossi, Director of Release Engineering at Facebook, described, “All the code supporting every feature we’re planning to launch over the next six months has already been deployed onto our production servers. All we need to do is turn it on.

No one should sign up for more than one or two cards at a time.

Because we care about quality, we even inject faults into our production environment so we can learn how our system fails in a planned manner.

I had no plan, only a list of features. I

Scrum does not tell you what to do; it helps to show what is going on. An intentionally incomplete framework like Scrum can never answer all your problems. How you enrich Scrum and make it your own is what matters. As you master Scrum, all the talk about Scrum should move to the background.

Faithful leadership isn’t about sticking to your plans when you should abandon them. Instead, it’s about being willing to question them and be questioned in pursuit of them, then course correct where necessary. 

But that doesn’t mean the plan is as stable as the plan to build a house. In middle development, teams still have learning to do, but the team’s focus is more on producing the deliverables that their partners need to produce the product at scale, sell it and support it in the field. While the team still has some Key Decisions to make and Knowledge Gaps to close, their focus turns more towards executing decisions that have already been made.

Instead of a central finance function tracking if funds are utilized as per plan, we have outcome owners accountable for realizing value out of pre-approved funds tied to outcomes rather than plans.

(Lindvall , et al. 2002, 197) Waterfall and spiral methodologies are plan-driven methods (also referred to as traditional methodologies.)

The Product Owner plans, composes, distributes, and tracks work from his or her level down....

Planning ... is a quest for value,

Plan, Do, Check, and Act

Plans are nothing; planning is everything,

The traditional planning framework is task-centric and the agile framework is value-centric. 

Recommended Reading Mike Cohn Agile Estimating and Planning provides guidance on iteration planning, including estimating the effort for user stories. David J. Anderson Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business provides the guidance, definitions, and metric calculations necessary to establish an efficient software development flow, including establishing WIP limits.

Finally, unlike Plan-and-Document, in Agile you revise code continuously to improve the design and to add functionality starting with the second iteration.

Anyone can plan but it takes someone who is agile to understand that their plan is not concrete.

Hyper, my 5-star rated book on responsive, agile, and flexible BI, breaks Amazon's Top 10 Best Sellers in Information Management (12/23/15, Kindle Edition).

Planning is everything. Plans are nothing." —Field Marshal Helmuth Graf von Moltke

Therefore, organizations need to decide whether their primary objective is to deliver long-term accurate plans to its executives or if it is to deliver business value to its customers.

intent. Additionally, if executives don’t design the planning process correctly, it can end up using a lot of the organization’s capacity without providing much value.

Most sprint planning meetings I have attended were fun. The ones that weren’t involved a poorly groomed product backlog. When the backlog isn’t groomed prior to the meeting, the product owner and team often try to carry out impromptu grooming activities, which consume valuable planning time and result in poor requirements and weak commitments. Plus, everyone is exhausted by the end of the meeting.

Instead of coming up with a BIG plan and hoping nothing unexpected happens, Agile allows you to change a project’s direction on the go. The Agile approach consists of many overlapping methodologies and Kanban is one of them. Let’s

Post Interview Don’t forget to send a written “Thank You” card to each interviewer (no e-mails unless it is in addition to a written one with additional info like a personal thank you video). This is especially important between multiple rounds of interviews; take the opportunity to show new information demonstrating you are a subject matter expert (article, video, portfolio, etc.) after each round of interviews. And follow up minimally by phone to show continued interest without coming off as desperate or a stalker.

The better question to ask is, “which tactic should I NOT use and which one should I start with first?” This allows us to decide which tactic will give us the largest impact for time spent. Prioritization is key when it comes to launching a job search strategy. Here are the results from a 2013 survey by recruiting authority Lou Adler: Tactic Used to Secure Job Internal Move or Networking Job Ad Recruiter Found LinkedIn Profile or Resume % Effectiveness 58% 27% 14%

A key tenet of agile estimating and planning is that we estimate size but derive duration.

Even with a well-intentioned and highly communicative team, it is possible that the results of an iteration could be found worthless when shown to the broader organization or external users at the conclusion of the iteration.

If you tie iterations to the ends of months, one out of every three iterations will coincide with the end of a fiscal quarter.

The cone of uncertainty shows that during the feasibility phase of a project a schedule estimate is typically as far off as 60% to 160%. That is, a project expected to take 20 weeks could take anywhere from 12 to 32 weeks. After the requirements are written, the estimate might still be off +/- 15% in either direction. So an estimate of 20 weeks means work that takes 17 to 23 weeks. Figure 1.1. The cone of uncertainty narrows as the project progresses.

With a loaded backlog, no planning meetings are necessary. There are no milestones, no sprints, and no retrospectives. Kanban flows continuously, so long as there is work to do. Naturally,

Agility should not be translated to sacrificing planning, management guidelines, and quality assurance.

following one process and the development team with different process philosophies, terms and metrics. In Waterfall, once a “plan” is baked and approved, there is an expectation that the plan will be followed and delivered upon, even if the development team is using Agile to execute. Now I’m going to say it, “But that’s not truly Agile,” since Agile requires the plan to be flexible and consistently reprioritized and revised. We see this approach so often that we’ve heard many describe it as, “WaterScrumFall. ” It’s really business as usual

When dealing with a complex adaptive system, sticking to the plan is a recipe for failure. 

20% on detailed planning (Their poor throughput and high lead times were misattributed to faulty estimation, and so, hoping to get a better answer, they were asked to estimate the work in greater detail.)

Jon flexed the fingers of his sword hand. The Night’s Watch takes no part. He closed his fist and opened it again. What you propose is nothing less than treason. He thought of Robb, with snowflakes melting in his hair. Kill the boy and let the man be born. He thought of Bran, clambering up a tower wall, agile as a monkey. Of Rickon’s breathless laughter. Of Sansa, brushing out Lady’s coat and singing to herself. You know nothing, Jon Snow. He thought of Arya, her hair as tangled as a bird’s nest. I made him a warm cloak from the skins of the six whores who came with him to Winterfell … I want my bride back … I want my bride back … I want my bride back … “I think we had best change the plan,” Jon Snow said.

As we confront the challenges of an increasingly interconnected world, the imperative to seek multiple perspectives becomes ever more pressing. The human capacity for reasoning empowers us as problem solvers, yet it also renders us susceptible to shortsightedness. We’re full of cognitive biases and they often blind us to potential loopholes and weaknesses in our plans. However, lurking behind every solution lies the lurking threat of the cobra effect, poised to strike back with unintended consequences. By soliciting input from a range of perspectives, we gain a more holistic understanding of the system at play, enabling us to navigate potential pitfalls with greater foresight and agility.

We are big fans of the agile software movement. In 2001, seventeen software developers met in Snowbird, Utah, and published the “Manifesto for Agile Software.” The four main values in the manifesto remind us how the best friction fixers think and act: (1) “individuals and interactions over processes and tools”; (2) “working software over comprehensive documentation”; (3) “customer collaboration over contract negotiation”; and (4) “responding to change over following a plan.” Agile software teams deliver their work in small increments rather than in one “big bang” launch. Rather than following a rigid plan, they constantly evaluate results and constraints and update the software, and how they work, along the way.

The problem stated by the Agile Manifesto authors is the reliance on pre-planning around incorrect assumptions, and the lack of coordination between business owners and developers. By fixing those two core problems, Agile Software Development aims to make the act of building software more agile.

Companies need to shift from thinking about profit to thinking about purpose. They need to move from hierarchical structures to networked structures. Management needs to switch from being controlling to being empowering, from planning to experimenting, and from privacy to transparency.

When we think about physical fitness, agility centers on your ability to move quickly and easily. To make adjustments to what’s happening around you. To help you stay on your feet when you get thrown off balance.

Agility is about overriding defaults. For me, a good way to accomplish that is to remember what happened the last time I went on autopilot. Ask yourself: What was the outcome? Is that something I want to repeat? If the results weren’t good in the past, don’t use the same recipe! Try something different. If you tend to get frustrated and other people get defensive, see if you can be kinder. If you’re a yeller, see if you can deliver the same message with a calm demeanor and a more compassionate “inside” voice.

Agility is about handling the curveballs life pitches at us. It’s being able to respond quickly when you’re caught off guard. When you engage your core to Pause and Think, you can Act by responding thoughtfully when you’re blindsided, instead of reacting instinctually.

If you think of life as a game of dodgeball, Agility is about learning to stay light on your feet and think about what you want to do with all those balls flying at you. In the short term, it can feel easier to duck and avoid them or be more satisfying to throw a ball back even harder, but sometimes the right choice is to call for a time out.

New entrants have something the incumbents don’t: agility. It is really hard to make decisions when you have seven layers of management. It’s hard for new ideas to percolate up when there are so many people and priorities. That was our M.O. at Nest: Be fast. Make quick decisions. Evolve more quickly than anyone thinks you can.

Agility asks us to override our knee-jerk tendency to fire back, to get angry, and to defend ourselves. When you work your core in Agility, you Pause, Think about what you want or need in the situation, and try to identify a more thoughtful and intentional course of Action. With practice, you can have the knee-jerk reactions without the jerk!

We hear all the time about how important it is to be physically fit. Our society has become ultra-focused on fitness and health. Our Facebook feeds are filled with seven-minute workouts. There are YouTube videos galore on seven days to rock-hard abs. The radio plays ads to lose ten pounds in ten days, but only if you call in the next ten minutes. Even the president told us to be physically fit. Remember the Presidential Physical Fitness Test in elementary school? A quick shuttle run, the dreaded flexed arm hang. It tested strength, endurance, flexibility, and agility. All different ways to prove we were physically fit. Or not. As a matter of fact, Americans now spend more on fitness than on college tuition.1 Over a lifetime, the average American spends more than $100,000 on things like gym memberships, supplements, exercise equipment, and personal training.2 Seems shocking, right? But where are the training programs for the thoughts in your head? Those thoughts that tell you that you have no choices when bad things happen. Those thoughts that try to convince you everything is out of your control in difficult situations. Where do you go if you want to be Thoughtfully Fit? Right here in this book.

Regular review and updates of a school’s business plan enables administrators to stay agile and responsive to evolving educational needs and priorities.

The Agile project manager plays a crucial role in ensuring the successful delivery of projects using Agile methodologies. They act as facilitators, coaches, and leaders, guiding the team through the iterative development process. Here are some key responsibilities of an Agile project manager: Orchestrating the project's lifecycle: This involves planning and breakdown of work into sprints, facilitating ceremonies like daily stand-ups, sprint planning, and retrospectives, and ensuring the project progresses smoothly towards its goals. Promoting collaboration and communication: Agile thrives on open communication and collaboration. The project manager fosters an environment where team members feel comfortable sharing ideas, concerns, and updates. They actively remove roadblocks and ensure everyone is aligned with the project vision and goals. Empowering the team: Agile teams are self-organizing and empowered to make decisions. The project manager provides guidance and support but avoids micromanaging. They trust the team's expertise and encourage them to take ownership of their work. Stakeholder management: The project manager acts as a bridge between the development team and stakeholders, including clients, sponsors, and other interested parties. They keep stakeholders informed of project progress, manage expectations, and address their concerns. Continuous improvement: Agile is an iterative process that emphasizes continuous improvement. The project manager actively seeks feedback from team members and stakeholders, analyzes project data, and identifies areas for improvement. They implement changes to the process and tools to enhance efficiency and effectiveness. Overall, the Agile project manager plays a vital role in driving successful project delivery through Agile methodologies. They wear multiple hats, acting as facilitators, coaches, leaders, and problem-solvers, ensuring the team has the resources, support, and environment they need to thrive.

Agile Software Development constructs that are not helpful when there are dependencies, long lead times, and resources from a variety of specific disciplines to manage with high cost-of-change. They don’t start over with a new plan every sprint or program increment.

Being able to consider what lies ahead, to anticipate change and make plans emerged as survival mechanisms that made up for what our species might have lacked in strength, speed or agility.18 Four main factors have enabled this seismic cognitive leap: wayfinding, the “grandmother effect,” social cooperation, and tool innovation (see the following). Each of them represents an essential scene in the slow-time psychodrama of human evolution.

In the realm of spiritual philosophy, where the sacred and the mundane converge, where the mystical dances with the ordinary, there exists an enchanting archetype that beckons us to explore the depths of our souls—the Divine Rabbit. This ethereal creature, a symbol of fertility, rebirth, and spiritual illumination, invites us to embark on a profound journey of self-discovery and transcendence. The Divine Rabbit, with its gentle countenance and nimble grace, embodies the essence of the divine feminine, representing the nurturing and creative aspects of existence. It is a messenger of the cosmic forces, whispering ancient wisdom and guiding us towards the realization of our true nature. With each hop, it traverses the sacred landscapes of our consciousness, leaving in its wake the seeds of transformation and spiritual awakening. This mystical creature, adorned with the symbols of abundance and growth, teaches us the profound truth that spirituality is not confined to lofty realms or esoteric knowledge, but is deeply rooted in the tapestry of our everyday lives. The Divine Rabbit invites us to cultivate a sense of presence and mindfulness, to embrace the magic of the present moment, and to recognize that every breath we take is an opportunity for divine communion. In the Divine Rabbit, we find a profound reflection of our own spiritual journey. Like the rabbit, we too navigate the maze of existence, encountering both obstacles and opportunities along the way. The Divine Rabbit reminds us to approach these challenges with grace, agility, and an unwavering trust in the divine plan. It teaches us that even in the face of adversity, we possess the innate resilience to overcome, to rise above our limitations, and to embrace the boundless potential that resides within us. The Divine Rabbit also serves as a catalyst for profound transformation and rebirth. Just as the rabbit sheds its old fur to make way for new growth, we too are called to release the layers of conditioning, limiting beliefs, and attachments that no longer serve our highest good. The Divine Rabbit encourages us to step into the fullness of our authentic selves, to embrace our innate gifts and talents, and to allow the light of our divine essence to illuminate the world around us. Moreover, the Divine Rabbit invites us to honor the interconnectedness of all beings and the sacredness of every living creature. It teaches us to tread lightly upon the Earth, recognizing that our actions have far-reaching consequences. The Divine Rabbit reminds us of the importance of compassion, kindness, and love towards all beings, for in their eyes, we catch a glimpse of the divine spark that resides within us all. As we embark on our spiritual journey, let us heed the wisdom of the Divine Rabbit. Let us cultivate a sense of wonder and curiosity, allowing ourselves to be guided by the synchronicities and signs that pepper our path. Let us embrace the cycles of life and honor the sacredness of both beginnings and endings. And above all, let us remember that within the heart of the Divine Rabbit resides the eternal flame of our own divine essence, waiting to be kindled and expressed in all its radiant glory. May we follow the path of the Divine Rabbit, awakening to the depths of our being, embracing our divine nature, and embodying the transformative power of love, compassion, and spiritual illumination. In doing so, we dance in harmony with the rhythm of the universe, honoring the sacredness of life, and fulfilling our highest purpose.

Some web development organizations, particularly those following Agile development methodologies, don’t like this advice. “You Ain’t Gonna Need It,” they say, quoting the YAGNI principle of waiting until you definitely need a feature or plan before starting to work on it. “Who knows if we’ll ever get attacked? Working on a plan now could end up just being wasted time. We’ll deal with this issue if it ever happens.” That’s fine—if you don’t mind getting your team together for an ad-hoc scrum meeting at 3:00 A.M. on Christmas morning.

As existing companies struggle to find ways to cope with unprecedented change, leaders must learn to proactively self-disrupt in a controlled fashion before they are disrupted against their will