What can Agile teams learn from frogs? cover image
Delivery Management

What can Agile teams learn from frogs?

Avoiding the trap of eroding sprint goals so there will be motivation to take corrective actions to prevent future failures.

Profile image of Anshul Kapoor
Anshul Kapoor
May 28, 2020 • 4 min read
4.47 (15)
Scrum
Learning
Continuous Improvement
Definition of Done
Sprint Goal
Show more

Summary

Anshul Kapoor uses the analogy of a frog and boiling water to pass fundamental lessons Agile teams can learn to avoid sprint goal failures. He notes that like a frog in slightly warm water, Agile teams get comfortable with a few sprint goal failures, and the more the situation persists the teams' failure tolerance levels increases putting the organization into the trap of eroding goals. The same case happens to the frog if you continue heating the water. It tolerates the temperatures and boils along with it. Let's read this interesting article for more insights into how Agile teams relate to a frog in warm water, and what we can do to deal with the trap of eroding goals.

Takeaways

  • A frog gets comfortable if it is in slightly warm water, if you slowly heat the water increasing its temperatures, the frog is likely to boil along with it. Scrum teams portray this when they worry less about their sprint goal failures and assume they would achieve the goal next sprint. However, the situation just worsens.
  • If you put a frog in a bucket of boiling water, the frog will jump right out of the bucket. Scrum team replicates this after missing the sprint goal a couple of times by doing retrospection to bring about major improvements in their way of working to prevent another failure.
  • Scrum teams are supposed to work towards achieving the Sprint Goal in every Sprint.

Suggested Resources