Quotes from Jim Highsmith

Effective project leaders focus on people, product, and process—in that order. Without the right people, nothing gets built. Without a laser focus on product value, extraneous activities creep in. Without a minimum process framework, there can be inefficiency and possibly a little chaos.

Agility is more attitude than process, more environment than methodology.

The ability to respond to change is good. The ability to create change for competitors is even better. When you create change you are on the competitive offensive. When you respond to competitors' changes you are on the defensive. When you can respond to change at any point in the development lifecycle, even late, then you have a distinct advantage.

At any organizational level people are leaders not because of what they do, but because of who they are.

Optimization implies that we already know how to do something but that we now need to improve it. Innovation implies that we don't know how to do something, and searching for that knowledge is paramount.

Agile Project Management focuses on selecting the right skills for project team members and molding them into productive teams.

rinciples, or "rules" in complexity theory terminology, affect how tools and practices are implemented. Practices are how principles are acted out. Grand principles that generate no action are mere vapor. Conversely, specific practices in the absence of guiding principles are often inappropriately used. Although the use of agile practices may vary from team to team, the principles are constant. Principles are the simple rules of complex human adaptive systems.

Creativity and innovation are the emergent results of well functioning agile teams.

If we want to build great products, we need great people. If we want to attract and keep great people, we need great principles.

Adaptation can be considered a mindful response to change.

Anyone who practices ad hoc development under the guise of agile methods is an imposter.

The essence of Agile movement, whether in new product development, new service offerings, software applications, or project management, rests on two foundational goals: delivering valuable products to customers and creating working environments in which people look forward to coming to work each day.

People don't change that much. Don't waste time trying to put in what was left out. Try to draw out what was left in. That is hard enough (Buckingham and Coffman 1999).

Self-organizing teams form the core of APM. They blend freedom and responsibility, flexibility and structure. In the face of inconsistency and ambiguity, the teams strive to consistently deliver on the product vision within the project constraints. Accomplishing this requires teams with a self-organizing structure and self-disciplined individual team members. Building this kind of team is the core of an agile project leader's job.

The agile movement supports individuals and teams through dedication to the concepts of self-organization, self-discipline, egalitarianism, respect for individuals, and competency. "Agile" is a socio-technical movement driven by both the desire to create a particular work environment and the belief that an adaptive environment is critical to the goal of delivering innovative products to customers.

Be quick, but don't hurry.

Creating change requires innovation: developing new products, creating new sales channels, reducing product development time, customizing products for increasingly smaller market segments. In addition, your company must be able to respond quickly to both anticipated and unanticipated changes created by your competitors and customers.

APM is about people, their interactions, and creating an environment in which individual creativity and capability erupts to create great products. It's people, not processes, that build great products.

Innovative ideas aren't generated in structured, authoritarian environments but in an adaptive culture based on the principles of self-organization and self-discipline.

Agile organizations must adhere to the same values as agile teams: • Delivering value over meeting constraints • Leading the team over managing tasks • Adapting to change over conforming to plans Executives and managers need to lead their organizations in living these values and taking actions based on them—and one of the critical areas on which they need to take action is measuring performance in ways that encourage their organizations to embrace agility.

If you find that your organization can't make the hard decisions that Scrum demands, then high-risk, uncertain projects have very little probability of success in your organization.

If you have unskilled people who work poorly together, no amount of process will save your projects.

The best way to get a project done faster is to start sooner