The title is an homage to Pete Seegers – Where have all the flowers gone?
The other day, I was in a Moose Herd chat (mid-June 2023), and the conversation revolved around innovation. And it dawned on me that I haven’t been hearing innovation stuff as much as I used to.
For example, I’d say from ~2008 – 2015; there was lots and lots of discussion coming out of the agile community around things like –
Google 20% time
Refactoring
Innovation days
Innovation sprints
Active refactoring
Pair programming, general pairing
Mob programming; general mobbing
Hackathons
Design sprints
Paper prototyping
Storyboarding
Just to name a few practices around team-based innovation. But to be honest, I’m hearing less and less of this now, both from the organizations/teams I’m coaching or interacting with and from community thought leaders.
So, my question is—
Have these activities and practices slipped away and been forgotten?
Or
Are they such common practices that, nobody talks about them anymore, they just are?
To that end, my colleague and friend Leon Sabarsky and I have created a short survey to collect information about the State of Innovation in Agile Ways of Working.
We’d very much appreciate hearing about your experiences.
Stay agile my friends,
Bob.
On a related note, I wrote this in 2013…
https://rgalen.com/agile-training-news/2013/10/1/google-20-timesadly-its-gone
Something else…
https://rgalen.com/agile-training-news/2016/11/10/innovation-management-vs-team-responsibility