In our last post, we revisited the Agile Manifesto and asked a simple—but critical—question: are we living these principles, or merely following a process?

Today, we’re going to turn reflection into action. Let’s explore how teams and leadership can identify where they’re stuck in “doing” and start moving toward truly being agile.

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Step 1: Map Your Practices to Principles

Start by taking the 12 Agile principles and asking your team to rate current adherence:

• ✅ “We actively practice this principle”
• ⚠️ “We sometimes practice it, inconsistently”
• ❌ “We don’t practice this at all”

This exercise exposes gaps between philosophy and practice. It also sparks conversation about why some principles are harder to live than others.

Example Question:

• Principle 4: Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
• Do we collaborate daily, or do handoffs dominate our workflow?

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Step 2: Identify “Doing Agile” Behaviors

Next, list behaviors or rituals that are performed for the sake of Agile, rather than its intent.

Common examples include:

• Filling Jira fields just to satisfy reporting requirements
• Conducting daily stand-ups as status updates instead of collaboration
• Strictly following a framework despite team context or constraints

Ask: Which activities feel like checkboxes? Which ones genuinely improve delivery, collaboration, or learning?

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Step 3: Leadership Reflection

Agility starts at the top. Leaders should reflect on:

• Are we trusting teams to self-organize?
• Do we encourage experimentation, or do we punish failure?
• Are metrics used to inform decisions, or to assign blame?

Even one small change in leadership behavior—like removing a reporting requirement that doesn’t add value—can dramatically improve team agility.

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Step 4: Create an Action Plan

Once gaps are identified, teams should:

1. Pick one principle to focus on for the next sprint or month.
2. Define specific behaviors or experiments that demonstrate true adherence.
3. Inspect the results at the next retrospective and adapt accordingly.

Example: If teams struggle with Principle 3 (frequent delivery), the experiment might be to deliver smaller, usable increments weekly instead of waiting for a “big bang” release.

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Step 5: Make Reflection a Habit

Finally, make this practice part of your regular cadence:

• Quarterly “Agility Health Checks”
• Retrospectives focused on principles rather than just deliverables
• Leadership check-ins reviewing how teams are being agile, not just doing agile

Agility isn’t a one-time project. It’s continuous reflection, adjustment, and alignment with core principles.

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Take It to Your Team

1. Principle Mapping Exercise – Spend 30–45 minutes mapping practices to principles and rating adherence.
2. Behavior Audit – Identify one ritual that is “doing agile” without delivering value.
3. Experiment Sprint – Pick one principle to focus on and define an experiment to live it more fully.

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Agility is a practice, not a checklist. By reflecting honestly and taking targeted action, teams and leaders can close the gap between being agile and doing agile—and start seeing real benefits in collaboration, delivery, and learning.