Being "AGILE" - the latest BUZZ word; but worth looking into

We've all heard it before in the office hallways, or sprinkled into a conversation... "We need to be more agile"! But I sometimes wonder if people are using agile as an adjective synonymous to being flexible or acting quickly. While the Agile Methodology incorporates flexibility and speed, some work is required to understand the Agile practice in order to reap its benefits. 

Last night I attended CommuniTech's Agile/Lean session on Agile Planning and Analysis, presented by Mary Gorman, Vice President of Quality & Delivery at EBG Consulting. It was a great topic to explore because of the common misunderstanding that Agile methods have no process - 'It's fast because you get to skip all the tedious planning and just dive into "the work" to get things done'. No? 

Mary took us through the Essential Partnerships, Seven Product Dimensions and Structured Conversations - as outlined in her book 'Discover to Deliver' (co-authored by Ellen Gottesdiener). 

Essential Partnerships
It seems obvious that a successful project requires a strong relationship between the Customer, Technology and Business - but often this is not the case. I especially liked Mary's point about the need for transparency on the different types of Value Considerations. Customers, Technology and Business representatives will all have different perspectives on benefits, risks, costs and dependencies. These differences ensure a favourable end-result.
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Seven Product Dimensions
Mary encouraged the group to analyse the desired product in the short-term (2 weeks), medium-term, and long-term (2 years). This type of planning should occur at the beginning of an agile project, but also during each Sprint Planning session. In the traditional Waterfall Methodology, the expectation would be for all this analysis to be completed at the beginning of a project. But Agile projects are iterative, so there is "just enough" initial planning and the details are worked out in the appropriate future Sprint. 
LINK TO THE 7 PRODUCT DIMENSIONS - Users, Interfaces, Actions, Data, Controls, Environment, Quality Attributes

Structured Conversations
Just like every effective meeting requires some upfront planning and organized objectives - agile work benefits from 'facilitated collaborative discovery' to elicit, analyse and learn from each other. Sprint Planning has a clear objective: to define the scope of the upcoming Sprint. The anticipated value from each User Story is evaluated to plan out the next Sprint Backlog. Remembering that Customers, Technology and Business representatives will all have different value considerations - the group will need to facilitate the conversation to avoid chaos. If the group maturity is not quite ready to self-facilitate, Mary suggested bringing in an external facilitator (someone who is not part of the Scrum Team) to help provide the necessary structure. 
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It was nice to hear from an Agile expert who is clearly passionate about teaching the methodology to others and clarifying common misunderstandings about what Agile is and isn't. Agile DOES have processes and best practices to ensure an appropriate level of planning and analysis for a successful end-product.