Happy Halloween! What do you like best about the holiday: the candy, the costumes, or the scariness?
The scariness wins for me, although a fun-size Snickers is hard to resist.
But there’s good scary and bad. I’ve seen that adopting an agile approach to product development can be as scary as a good Halloween movie or ghost story. One thing that can be scary to some is the assumption that agile is more stressful.
And if true, that would suck—no one wants more stress in their life. But let’s take a closer look at those practices or aspects of agile that seem like they could increase stress.
For example, collaborating with others more frequently and intensely could take away the quiet, recharging time needed by some, especially introverts.
This can be frightening and a good Scrum Master or coach should assess whether team members are getting enough time for solo work. Designated hours for this can go a long way.
Similarly, having to report daily on yesterday’s progress and today’s plan can feel like nonstop pressure, which would be frightening.
A good Scrum Master or coach can address this, too: by ensuring that daily meetings are for team members to synchronize their work rather than allowing the creepy impression that everyone is checking up on them.
Sometimes this message needs to be shared with those outside the team; other times, team members themselves need to be reminded that the purpose is merely to synchronize and coordinate effort.
One of the more frightening stresses of agile is that deadlines are never more than a few weeks away.
However, because of their frequency, these deadlines are generally less important than the one big deadline of a traditionally managed project.
I sometimes think about the differences in these deadlines in terms of running on a treadmill.
A traditionally managed, or waterfall, project with its one big deadline is like running a hill profile. It’s nice and easy for a while until a big hill starts and then it’s extremely difficult and stressful.
And then the pattern repeats: pretty low stress for a long time and then really stressful at the end when the team tries to get the project over the big hill.
In contrast, agile is like setting the treadmill at a 2% incline and leaving it there for the duration of your run. It’s moderately stressful but never excessively so.
As team members become accustomed to the smaller deadlines that conclude each iteration, these become far less frightening.

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