warning... immodesty ahead

don't even open this...

This may be the most immodest thing I’ve ever written; definitely the most honest. My deeply English soul requires me to apologise in advance for such vulgarity. Please look away now…

For most of my life, I’ve been someone who claims to know a lot about a subject but, in reality, never went beyond average. Agile, however, caught my attention in a way that lasted long after the dopamine had finished. I’m starting to understand that I know considerably more than a lot of people in this field. I’ve been working for almost a decade to become an expert in agile, and I think that I may be further along the curve than I’ve ever been before in any other subject.

I’ve often gone into the confidence dip. I’ve never been to the end of the dip.

I think I may be approaching the end of the dip.

So, with my newfound ever-so-slightly increasing confidence, I need to reflect upon how I show up to people at the other end of the curve. I want to be supportive, compassionate, and informative. I know the rules well and have played with bending them. I may not know how to break the rules, but I know how not to break the rules.

In agile adoptions, I see a lot of people who are cutting their teeth. It is where I cut my teeth. They are great learning grounds for what can and can’t work. One is often trying to make order out of chaos, and so one can do many experiments in quick succession due to both the pressure to change things and the obviousness of whether or not something has worked.

And now I have some knowledge and some experience.

I would like to recognise that I may damage the confidence of others just by being myself. I remember tottering over the initial peak of confidence for many topics, and this post is to remind me that agile may be the first time I’ve chosen to recover from the fall.

There is nothing good or bad about being at any point in this journey. We all must choose whether or not and how far to go along it, and we don’t get to choose when we start. If you’re willing to learn, passionate, and true to the values and principles to the best of your ability, then you’re alright with me. (Is that too high a bar to set?)

The first sentence of the agile manifesto is

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it.

and so I try to help anyone I can in any way I can in order to achieve this.

I must forgive people for not knowing as much as me and thinking they’ve got this. I have been there and embarrassed myself more times than I wish to recall. (It is the downside of having high confidence in oneself for no reason to begin with.) I can support them over the cliff in more intimate settings where the only person they have to be vulnerable in front of is me, and help develop a trust that I will maintain the highest level of confidence about being coached to allow that vulnerability to happen. (This will take work…)

I want to thank my last boss. He is the kindest and most considerate man I’ve met in a very long time and only the second person I’ve been able to call a leader at work. He’s an inspiration, and I hope I can live up to his example.