Obvious Agile: Things the Trenches Taught Me

After years working as an Agilist, Ranjit Victor discovered that the gap between knowing and doing is wider than most people admit - and that the things that actually make teams work are not complicated. They are obvious. Which is exactly what makes them hard to practice consistently.

The Obvious Agile distils ten principles learned from real teams, real retrospectives, and real failure. No framework. No jargon. No breathless optimism about transformation. Just the things that work - and an honest account of how often even the author failed to do them.

Each chapter is built around one principle, one honest scenario where it matters, a practical Try This, and a Question to Sit With. You can read it in a sitting or work through one chapter a week.

The ten principles:

• Get It Out of Your Head
• Stop Solving the Wrong Thing
• Small Wins, Big Picture
• Plant Seeds, Not Mandates
• Make Progress Visible
• Know When to Walk
• Let People Own Their Words
• Champions Choose Themselves
• Failure Is a Result, Not a Crime
• Appreciation Is a Strategy

For team leads, scrum masters, project managers, developers thrust into agile roles, and anyone who works alongside other human beings and wants to do it better.