Joshua Kerievsky - Joy of Agility

Praise for Joy of Agility

This delightful book shines a light on both why and how to create agility in your organization. Through stories that are as engaging as they are insightful, Joshua Kerievsky shows how a culture of fear and a mindless pursuit of efficiency drive out learning and stifle agility. A set of simple, actionable mantras provide the way forward.

Amy C Edmondson, professor at Harvard Business School and author of The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth

Very well crafted and told; its hard to imagine a more illuminating guide to this mission-critical subject.

Harry Beckwith, New York Times bestselling author of Selling the Invisible

Stories influence our behavior more often and more effectively than logic, no matter how much we might pretend otherwise. Joshua Kerievsky has distilled his expertise into six mantras and illustrated each with short, captivating stories. I found the stories so engaging that I read almost the entire book in one eveningit was that difficult to put down.

Mary Poppendieck, coauthor of Lean Software Development series

Joy is the perfect word for this book. Joshua takes a beautiful approach to change by sharing compelling stories of agility in so many different industries and contexts. It will be impossible to not have a dozen of these stories inspire you on your own journey to the very human Joy of Agility . Read it, run the experiment, and start your joyful journey of change.

Richard Sheridan, CEO and chief storyteller at Menlo Innovations and author of Joy, Inc.: How We Built a Workplace People Love and Chief Joy Officer: How Great Leaders Lift Human Energy and Eliminate Fear

Joshua Kerievsky understands something very important about our species. We are storytellers. It is not only our preferred way of learning but also how our brains make sense of the world. Joshuas stories are inspirational and will lead you to discover the real joy of agility. I love this book.

Linda Rising, coauthor of Fearless Change and More Fearless Change

Joy is a tell. If you have joy on your team, you are in the most prized collaborative state. There is no better step you can take toward experiencing team joy than reading this book. It is a treasury of joyful practice, and you deserve to have it all.

Jim McCarthy, coauthor of Software for Your Head and Dynamics of Software Development

Whether youre an accomplished or aspiring agilist (or somewhere in between), this rich compendium is a bounty for anyone who wants to foster a culture of adaptability, collaboration, and improvement, while creating a more intentional, efficient, sustainable, andabove alloutstanding work experience and product. Engaging and inspiring, Joy of Agility is an absolute joy from beginning to end!

Tonianne DeMaria, coauthor of Shingo-award-winning Personal Kanban

Joshua, a fervent agile pioneer, understands the power of story and has assembled a host of stories that present facts and ideas about being agile as opposed to doing agile. Like shades of color on a palette, Joy of Agility enables us to understand both the broad sweep and nuances of agility; Enjoy. Learn. Remember. Act.

Jim Highsmith, agile pioneer, author, and former executive consultant at Thoughtworks

Reading Joy of Agility makes me want to hand this book to all of my clients. I love the definition of agile and the compelling stories that make one both think and laugh! The stories are short, crisp, and to the point. As a person who likes to highlight important things, I was inclined to highlight each and every story. This is an excellent and very insightful book!

Jutta Eckstein, business coach, change manager, and author of Company-wide Agility with Beyond Budgeting , Open Space & Sociocracy , Agile Software Development in the Large , and Agile Software Development with Distributed Teams

Joshuas masterful story curation won me over completely as a reader that doesnt even like story-centered books. Joshua has become the consummate voice of agility; there in the early days, helping shape and deeply understand the new practices introduced by the Agile movement. He continues to refine, expand, and reinvent that understanding for a new generation of practitioners. Whether you have been practicing agility for 20+ years or have barely heard of the concept, youll want to pick up Joy of Agility .

Michael Spayd, founder of The Collective Edge and coauthor of Agile Transformation: Using the Integral Agile Transformation Framework to Think and Lead Differently

Brilliant work and a dazzling diversity of stories!

Pat Reed, executive agile consultant in Australia and USA

JOY OF

AGILITY

Also by Joshua Kerievsky

Refactoring to Patterns

JOY OF AGILITY

How to Solve Problems
and Succeed Sooner

JOSHUA KERIEVSKY

Matt Holt Books

An Imprint of BenBella Books, Inc.

Dallas, TX

Joy of Agility copyright 2023 by Joshua Kerievsky

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Matt Holt is an imprint of BenBella Books, Inc.

BenBella and Matt Holt are federally registered trademarks.

First E-Book Edition: 2023

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022031856

Editing by Gregory Newton Brown

Special discounts for bulk sales are available. Please contact .

For

Bruce, Diana, Dmitri,

Sasha, Sophia, and Eva,

and most of all, Maria.

Contents

O ne of the greatest gifts of my life has been discovering how agility enables excellence. I love finding ways to make slow and awkward things faster and easier, solving difficult problems by being readily resourceful, and adapting to change with speed and grace. Its the joy of agility.

In the late 1990s, I was part of a small movement that pioneered what would become agile software development. We experimented with ways to remove anything that slowed us down or made work difficult. My interactions with colleagues became smoother, collaboration with customers became closer, feedback came faster, making changes became safer, and handling unexpected events became easier. We learned how to sustainably create more value with less waste. That ultimately helped us produce happier customers sooner.

Several decades spent experimenting, learning, unlearning, and reflecting on the nature of agilityincluding helping my own company and our clients become more agile, applying agility to home repairs, health, fitness, parenting, and moreled to this book.

Joy of Agility begins by tackling the widespread confusion surrounding the definition of the word agile . It then presents six agile mantras that help make agility actionable. Finally, the majority of the book is an anthology of stories. These stories serve to clarify one or more agile mantras and come from many professions, including business, education, entertainment, sports, psychology, marketing, aviation, and more. Each story concludes with a call to action.

I will be delighted if even one of these stories inspires you to put this book down and take action.