Where – Where to Find Agile Patterns

We share Agile Patterns with the greater Agile community through blogs, articles, conferences, training events, and eventually books.

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When - When to Define Agile Patterns

Most of us use simple Agile Patterns without knowing it.  The challenge is to occasionally retrospect, identify new Agile Patterns, write them down, and share them with others.

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Who - Who Needs Agile Patterns

Agile professionals, practitioners, novices, and anyone working with Agile use Agile Patterns.  Agile Patterns are the way we share our insights, learnings, and challenges in the Agile arena.

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Why - Why use Agile Patterns

Since Agile Patterns are simple, efficient, and engaging to the practitioners, they are very effective at their purpose, that is typically providing a desired, focused, well-define outcome.  Agile Patterns are better, faster, cheaper, and simpler than traditional solutions.  Agile Patterns are used for succinctly communicating ways of doing things in an Agile way.

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What - What is an Agile Pattern

A pattern is a discernible regularity in nature or in a man made-construct, or a cyclic repeatable sequence; e.g. template, model, stencil, tessellation, Mandelbrot fractal.

An agile pattern is a simple, repeatable construct that provides a simple solution to a common problem encountered by agile organizations; e.g. Agile Frameworks: Scrum, XP, Kanban, Lean, DSDM, xDD, xUP, SAFe, etc; Agile Practices: pair programming, open space, etc.

Agile Patterns can work independently, or in tandem with other Agile Patterns, or as part of Agile Framework, that has many sets and subsets of Agile Patterns.

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Which – Which is the seventh question

“Which” is the most fun, intriguing, and interesting of the seven questions.  And it seems the one everyone forgets. 

Asking “which” questions builds clarity by differentiating important details from unimportant details. 

If “which” questions cannot be answered on the spot, 

then they allow us to create meaningful follow-up actions and discussions. 

And “which” questions can be asked at any time: 

right at the start of creating an original idea, 

right up to the final close of a project.

“Which” is the question of free will.  

It reminds us of the choices we always have, but may not recognize.

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How – How to use the seven questions

Here is a brief overview of how to use the Seven Questions in proposing a new idea.

“what” questions get answers about things (tangibles), concepts (intangibles), and related activities

“why” questions get answers about motivations: reasons (historical causes) and purposes (future drivers)

“who” questions get answers about the people (individual human beings) and roles (characterizations individuals portray)

“when” questions get answers about time: dates (fixed or ranges) and schedules (sequences for events)

“where” questions, we get answers about places (physical) and locations (virtual)

“how” questions get answers about strategies (approaches to the problems) and methods (patterns for solving the problems)

“which” questions build clarity by differentiating important details from unimportant details in the other six questions.

Please note - the order of answering the questions is not inherently important.  But sometimes you may want to answer the questions in a specific sequence to foster a flow of the presented idea. 

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Who – Who needs the seven questions

There are two primary users of the seven questions

(1) Anyone who needs to organize her / his ideas into a meaningful proposal

(2) Anyone who needs to confirm a proposal is meaningful and comprehensive

The seven questions are an Agile tool for people to communicate in a structured fashion, which is simple and easy to remember – Seven Questions! 

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Where - Where to use the seven questions

The original intent for the Seven Questions was to present Agile Strategies for new ideas.  Yet over time, I have found them useful in other contexts.   For example, they can be used for proposals, agendas, interviews, presentations, training, discussions, kick-offs,questionnaires, surveys, etc.   At every engagement I find new ways to use the Seven Questions.   They just seem to be a good quick way to organize random thoughts into a simple well-formed strategy.

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