8/13/2019 Dr. Robert L Read's Agile Process
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Dr. Ron L. Read The Federal-Start Up Notes
1) You saw a way to improve something for the American people or
theAmerican taxpayer.
2) You found a friend who could give you moral support when you
encounteredfrustration.
3) You read Lean Startup by Eric Ries and Extreme Programming
Explained byKent Beck and you printed out the Agile Manifesto and
hung it on your wall.
4) Every week, you wrote down something that you wanted to learn
about howto make your improvement.
5) Every week, and most importantly, the first week, you tested
that hypothesiswith a customer, either by talking to them, showing
them a sketch or a
mockup, or showing them a demo.
6) You listened to the customers, really, really deeply.7) Every
week, you responded to what you learned, making your idea or
your
story or your policy or prototype better.
8) As your product got better, more people became excited about
your product,and you stopped thinking of it as your product and
started thinking of it asour product
9) People started telling you to do things that were to too big
to be done in aweek, but you knew that was a mistake. You
ruthlessly stuck to your plan and
made very small, one-week improvements and got feedback EVERY
SINGLE
WEEK.
10)You encountered resistance to your idea, which you saw as an
opportunity toask you customers how to overcome resistance.
11)You stood on the shoulders of giantsyou started harnessing
the software,ideas, energy, and wisdom of others, who were excited
by the continuous
progress you were demonstrating.12)You did not personally
overcome your problem, but rather you built
something that got the customers excited and their excitement
overcame the
problem.
13)You were blocked by a powerful enemy: The force of habit. But
you refusedto give up. You knew that most people want to do what is
best. So you
listened to your enemies and understood their fears and found
ways to
eliminate their fear and turn them into friends.
14)You never let any problem stop you completely. You kept
making yourproduct better and better and you did whatever it took
to get it in front of
more and more customers every week.
15)Like any good Hollywood movie, you achieved a false victory.
You brokethrough to leaders of your agency, who shoed initial
excitement, but then,
without knowing, asked you to stop your forward progress and
become less
agile. They said, This would work if we only did X so you fell
into the trap of
working on X before you realized that X is way too big.
16)You found a way to break X into smaller pieces, and you
started to makeprogress again.
