{"id":113,"date":"2007-08-27T06:40:40","date_gmt":"2007-08-27T05:40:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/judykat.com\/ken\/2007\/08\/27\/the-road-not-taken\/"},"modified":"2010-09-06T06:26:21","modified_gmt":"2010-09-06T10:26:21","slug":"the-road-not-taken","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/judykat.com\/ken-judy\/the-road-not-taken\/","title":{"rendered":"The Road Not Taken"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/judykat.com\/ken-judy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/08\/mountainpath2.gif\" alt='Mountain Path Ript - Photo by Kathie Horejsi' style=\"border:none;\"  \/><\/p>\n<p>I began advocating agile principles at my company four years ago. Over time, my co-workers and I have grown into a Scrum\/XP team. We have a track record of successful projects and a handful of supportive sponsors. Senior executives value our developers. My CTO understands the team dynamic itself is the prize asset.<\/p>\n<p>Having reached a milestone on <span class=\"removed_link\">one of our larger projects<\/span> and seeing ambitious work ahead, I wanted to write about how I stood at a crossroads: contribute to the team or attempt to nurture agile values elsewhere in the organization. <\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a pleasant, contrasting choice. But it assumes a lone agile team can thrive after becoming visible to the larger organization. There are two pressing reasons why I doubt this is true:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>An agile team attacks impediments from within or without. Either the team makes progress against these obstacles or it declines.\n<\/li>\n<li>Human nature abhors exceptions however exceptional. If the organization doesn&#8217;t become a little more like us, it will surely, inevitably re-make us to be more like it.\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/judykat.com\/ken-judy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/08\/mountainpath.gif\" alt='Mountain Path Ript - Photo by Kathie Horejsi' style=\"border:none;\" width=\"200px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>So, no crossroads. One path lies before me and it looks surprisingly familiar. <\/p>\n<p>As I did four years ago, I must advocate agile from within and peer to peer. This time around, I have success at my back but face longer odds.<\/p>\n<p>Scrum the project. Scrum organizational change.<\/p>\n<p>I can only make progress one step at a time.  I must demystify what we do by allowing more <a href=\"http:\/\/www.implementingscrum.com\/cartoons\/implementingscrum-20060911.html\">chickens<\/a> into my team&#8217;s reviews. I must find and coach others predisposed to agile values. I must find at least one executive willing to scrum a thorny project with their staff. If I get the chance, I must seek out expert coaching for those above and across me in the organization.<\/p>\n<p>As four years ago, success relies more on others than on myself. But I believe, as before, that not trying is worse than failing in the attempt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I began advocating agile principles at my company four years ago. Over time, my co-workers and I have grown into a Scrum\/XP team. We have a track record of successful projects and a handful of supportive sponsors. Senior executives value &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/judykat.com\/ken-judy\/the-road-not-taken\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":121,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[19,168,265,194,297,878,22],"class_list":["post-113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scrum","tag-agile-software-development","tag-coach","tag-cto","tag-executive","tag-peer-to-peer","tag-scrum","tag-xp"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/judykat.com\/ken-judy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/08\/mountainpath2.gif","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/judykat.com\/ken-judy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/judykat.com\/ken-judy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/judykat.com\/ken-judy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/judykat.com\/ken-judy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/judykat.com\/ken-judy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/judykat.com\/ken-judy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2225,"href":"https:\/\/judykat.com\/ken-judy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions\/2225"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/judykat.com\/ken-judy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/judykat.com\/ken-judy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/judykat.com\/ken-judy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/judykat.com\/ken-judy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}