Striving towards Excellence

-Karthik Gurumurthy

I had this realization during our daily standup today—all these "revolutionary" agile frameworks we're implementing aren't actually new ideas. The  SAFe, Scrum of Scrums—they're just fresh packaging of timeless human wisdom about collaboration and adaptation.

When our agile coach introduced that "innovative" approach to retrospectives last sprint, I smiled to myself. Ancient Romans had their own versions of looking back and learning from experience. Our fancy Kanban board? Just a digital version of how craftspeople have managed workflows for centuries.

But here's what makes our transformation special: it's happening with our unique team, in our specific company, right now. No one has ever implemented agile practices with exactly our mix of personalities, challenges, and goals before. The combination of our junior developer's enthusiasm, our product owner's vision, and our particular market pressures—that's never existed quite this way before.

I can't control whether the executive team will change priorities again or if a critical stakeholder will miss another demo. But I do have power over how I respond. When our last sprint got derailed by unexpected technical debt, I could have gone into blame mode. Instead, I helped facilitate a problem-solving session that got us back on track.

There's something comforting about knowing that humans have always faced change and needed to adapt. Our team struggles with WIP limits and capacity planning just like countless others before us. But we're applying these eternal principles to our specific challenges today.

I might not be revolutionizing project management with my standup updates or refinement suggestions, but I'm bringing my unique perspective to these timeless practices. Our transformation isn't groundbreaking in concept, but it's still our unique journey—trying, failing, learning, and ultimately moving forward together.

Today's sprint planning is my chance to embody these ancient principles of collaboration in a way that only I can, right here, right now.

I may not be reinventing the wheel with my thoughts, but I'm the only one who gets to think them exactly this way, right now. And that's pretty cool.