Human Agile Model
Put the human first. Everything else comes after.
People first
First on the manifesto. Last in the room.
Human
Name who's hurting. Encourage before you push. Get both humans in the room before anything rolls out.
Adapt
Figure out what's actually broken here. Not what the playbook says.
Implement
Build it with the team in the room. Leaders help, they don't hover.
Scale
Grow without losing the people who made it work.
The hard questions
Ask these in your next retro. Watch who gets quiet.
Tap a card.
Burnout
Agile vs waterfall
Burnout
- Why more burnout in agile than waterfall?
- Waterfall had peaks. Sprints made the peak permanent.
- Transformation added ceremony on top of the day job
Sprint
Fast or pressured
Sprint
- Is sprinting delivering fast?
- Sprints deliver rhythm, not speed
- Every two weeks a deadline is pressure, not pace
Retro
Learn or track
Retro
- Is the retrospective for learning?
- Or a vessel of performance tracking?
- When leaders mine it for data, the team stops telling the truth
The divide
Dark Agile breaks people. Human Agile builds with them.
Dark Agile
Learn more
Dark Agile
- Headcount, not humans
- Dashboards that judge
- Blame when it fails
- Burnout = your problem
- Ceremony you can't refuse
Human Agile
Learn more
Human Agile
- Built with people, not rolled out at them
- In the room when change gets designed
- Remove harm before adding process
- Leaders who enable, not track
- Agile that helps your people
Principles
Tap a card.
Encourage
Not push
Encourage
- Human agile encourages before it pushes
- Change built with people, not done to them
- Trust earned, not demanded by timeline
Subtract
Before you add
Subtract
- Strip theater, surveillance, and harm first
- Teams can reject ceremony that does not help
- Less tracking, more enabling
Put the model to work
Engagement, workshops, and community live on the next page, not here.
How we work with organizations