Episode 199 – Should We Eliminate Commitment?

Let’s have a little controversy today.

People are afraid of commitment. They’re starting to say we should change the word – eliminate it all together.  I’m fine with minimizing estimates.  I’m super fine with re-negotiating scope based on changing priorities on the ground. But I’m not OK with allowing words like commitment, accountability, and promises to leave the lexicon.

Agile is about change. Change – transformation – or improvement of any kind implies movement.  We must move from where we are to today to where we want to be in the future in order to transform.  Movement requires action.  Neurons must fire. Muscles must activate. We must DO.

And if we DO in the context of a team, we need to know what’s happening next. Who will do what when?  How do we interdepend and interact?  This requires telling people what our actions will be – what will we DO and when will we do it?  In its simplest form, these are commitments.  And without them, we cannot blow away our customers.  We cannot delight the people who depend on us.

Agile itself is a promise. A commitment to do better than we used to.  To create safety for each other not by softening words, but by making it ok to fail so we can learn effectively together.

Without commitment, none of this will work.

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