In the style of the Agile Manifesto, what if we rewrote it from the start? What would you write?

Project-specific calculations are important but can be optimistic and unrealistic. What’s more constructive is cross-project prioritization. Instead of sweating calculations, ensure your organization starts, completes, and prioritizes the right work.

Bundling a group of highly-paid employees into a group labeled a Steering Committee fosters a culture of ambiguity, ego, exclusivity, and high cost. Assign those individuals to maximize speed, quality, inclusivity, and durability.

When the Agile Manifesto was written, money was loose (dot com bubble) and frequent go-live dates were in style. As the intensity of innovation increases, Agile contributes to VUCA and low marginal cost is worth high upfront costs. Economics pressure us to innovate how we innovate.

Thirty years into use, email continues to be a critical communication channel for innovation teams. But you often suffer from email overload. Know every trait of good and bad usage of email.

Meetings are great opportunities for team members to build upon each others’ ideas. Meetings are critical for alignment. Know every trait of a good meeting in order to maximize them.

Meetings are expensive, so you’d like the quality to rise. You have too many meetings, so you’d like the quantity to fall. Know every trait of a bad meeting in order to minimize them.

Some common documentation is counterproductive: meeting minutes, a public task list, a RAIL, FAQ, and more. You should know what to avoid, why to avoid them, and what to create instead.

There is a time and place for exotic word choice. Your project plan is not that place. Verb Sprawl creates ambiguity and noise. Verb Sprawl hurts your focus, speed, quality, and the employee experience.

The Agile Manifesto served innovation teams well for a couple decades. This post explains eight reasons why it no longer serves teams well and why it’s time to move on.

Legacy methodologies emphasize software. That’s not what makes innovation difficult. Elegance is a methodology that shapes how people interact, collaborate, and govern. Elegance is a combination of discipline and empathy - ruthlessness and grace.

The software-oriented methodology Agile produces code at a frequency of every two weeks. That is not the same as achieving low marginal cost and financial agility. Agile Is Not Agile.