Change vs disturbance

Change vs Disturbance #

One of the strong promises of going agile for a team (induced by the term itself) is to better adapt to change. Agile methodologies bet that by adapting to change the team will release a product that will, eventually, bring more value to its customers.
There are different kinds of change for which Agile is relevant, and helps raising best practice:

• Change of product positioning (a strategic change)
• Change of releases priorities (a tactical change)
• Change in the market stakes (induced by competitors for instance)
• Change in the Business Model (repositioning value in your model)
• Change induced by uncertainty (disruptive innovation context)
• Change in the technical approach (a need to update the tech choices)

"Good" change builds the team confidence in the future and helps navigating from uncertainty to less uncertainty.

Lacking product vision, changing your mind 3 times about a feature, having no consistency on your priorities (or no idea what they are), continuously introducing urgencies, altering the proper functioning or the stability of the team… these are NOT change. This is disturbance. Disturbance doesn't help navigating through uncertainty but it adds more noise to it.

To deal with disturbance, Agile brings no answer. I'm afraid you'll have to look into self-discipline.

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