- Purpose, Background, and Goals
- Who Should Read this Book?
- How This Book Is Organized
- Challenges
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
How This Book Is Organized
I can’t wait to show you what kata are all about and how kata and Agile complement each other. Even more importantly, I want to show you what you can do with the kata day by day. You will notice how these three goals of the book map directly to the table of contents.
Part I provides you with a foundation and introduction to kata and scientific thinking and explains what makes kata in general so unique. You will see that a mindset of scientific thinking can be very different compared to well-established Agile processes and frameworks. If you are contemplating using kata outside the boundaries of Agile, Part I is your companion. If you’re already familiar with kata, you may skim through this part of the book, although I think I offer a perspective that appeals to Agile practitioners and may be new to you. The main goal of Part I is to set the stage for Part II and eventually Part III.
After the foundation of the kata is laid in Part I, we explore how Agile ways of working can extend the basic form of the kata. Part II takes important Agile topics and links those to the kata: coaching, culture, collaboration, measuring value, and leadership, to name a few and give you food for thought and context. You can see each topic as an extension point to the original basic kata form that’s covered in Part I. At the end of Part II, you will have a better understanding of Agile Kata.
While you are reading through the first two parts of the book, you will probably generate tons of wonderful ideas for improving agility in your team or organization as a whole. In my experience since I began working with Agile Kata, the sky is truly the limit. You can go as far as your creativity and practice will take you.
After reading Part II, you might feel ready and impatient to get started. But before you do that, check out Part III, where I share a set of common use cases. These use cases may validate some of the ideas you generate while reading through Parts I and II. By sharing these vastly different but common use cases for Agile practitioners, I hope I inspire you to identify Agile Kata opportunities. I’m confident that at least one of the use cases will stand out as your personal starting point with Agile Kata. But I wouldn’t be surprised if you find more than one use case that connects well with what you would like to improve within your team or organization. In this case you will face the difficult choice of which to start with—which is not a bad problem to have.
I used the word common rather than typical to describe the use cases in Part III. Although the words seem to be interchangeable, there are minor differences. In the complex and exciting world that we live in, the word common implies something that is generally encountered in various situations. Typical, on the other hand, refers to something that is expected to happen; it’s more of a standard. The difference is nuanced, but it’s important when you work through the scenarios during Part III. When navigating the unknown with scientific thinking and Agile Kata, be prepared to be surprised. Instead of applying each use case as-is, like an exact recipe, the use cases should serve you only as a starting point.
The point of Agile Kata is not to provide a set of generic solutions to generic problems. Every organization or team has unique characteristics and parameters, and every client solution is unique as well. Thus, you’re working to achieve the goals of your products for your users based on the experiences and knowledge of your team.
The main benefit of the use cases is to stimulate some ideas about where Agile Kata might be useful and how it can be used. Although every situation is unique, I hope you will find inspiration in Part III to start trying this new pattern.
Throughout the book, you will discover the occasional links to additional resources, such as activities or material you might find useful when applying Agile Kata. In addition, each chapter ends with a set of reflection questions to let the topic sink in a little more.
