Over the past decade, I've been part of multiple scrum teams, as a developer or as a Scrum Master. And I have to say, not many people really know what Scrum or Agile is about. Even for me, it took a while to really understand it. Even I thought Scrum was about 'velocity' and completing as many story points, or tasks, or user stories in one sprint. Even I thought that that was the metric to assess if a scrum team was performing at its best. I thought it was about efficiency, but it's not.

What is it about then? If you look at the word 'Agile', it has to do with adaptability. It's about how quickly you can change, adapt, react or respond to changes within your environment. During Covid-19, we have seen many small businesses using 'Agile'. Take the restaurants for instance. They had to close their doors and had to find different ways of doing their business. So, many of them started offering Take Out and Delivery. They implemented it overnight with just an ad on Social Media with a phone number or email address where you could order your meal. The primary goal was to get the orders coming, as soon as possible. Not getting the orders in the most efficient way. It was about creating value as soon as possible: getting orders. And while that 'effective' solution is in place, we can adapt it and gradually implement a more 'efficient' way. Like using platforms like Take Away or Deliveroo.

As you can see, Agile is not about efficiency or the best solution. It's about 'effectiveness' or the best 'possible' solution for now. The solution that has the most value at the moment. Sociocracy 3.0 has a banner for this: "Good enough for now, safe enough to try".