Lynn and technology have not always been a power-couple. Flasks have been spilled, screens have been smashed, the people at the repair shop know my by my first name…

But, Lynn and tech have a great future together, I reckon.

I’ve been working on a project recently with software developers. Just ask me about tech jargon – devs, UX, product management, waterfall…

But I’ve ended up learning more than tech-jargon. I’ve been introduced to the technology meaning of the ‘agile’ way of working. And it has given me a lot to think about.

Speaking about thinking a lot, this blog was inspired by the book I am currently reading, ‘Don’t Overthink It’, by Anne Bogel. It’s fantastic.

Working in an agile way is all about fast development, quick feedback and then adaptation, defined in this Fintricity article as ‘relating to a method of project management, used especially for software development, that is characterised by the division of tasks into short phases of work and frequent reassessment and adaptation of plans.’. Basically, you keep creating and chucking things out, shaping up and improving product as you go along. More traditional approach to projects involve lengthy periods of research, preparation and analysis.

From a thinking point of view, how often do we overanalyse things in our head, gathering research and processing before acting? Could we not, like agile, see actions as experiments and just settle with ‘done’ over perfect? How much time and energy would we save by adapting-as-we-go, rather than waiting to gather all the potential information?

As someone whose default is to over-research everything (I’m trying to limit this after reading the overthinking book), I know I want to embrace an agile mind-set beyond software development. Overtly sharing the ‘workings’ and accepting that you are a working progress, rather than a perfected end product, certainly feels more freeing. And it delivers better results, as this McKinsey article shares, agile development practices ‘deliver goods and services to customers more efficiently and with greater reliability’. This can also be seen in the adoption of agile working practices as a management style – ‘Programming and nonprogramming teams need to shrink delivery cycles and feedback loops further if they are to maintain a competitive advantage’, shared in ‘The Future of Agile is Digital’.

If we are updating our working styles and patterns to embrace this progressive attitude, then surely we could update our thinking styles and patterns too?