Agile practitioners must truly understand and embody the agile mindset and principles, applying them effectively in real-world situations. This involves creating an environment that supports innovation, experimentation, and continuous learning. Practitioners should encourage collaboration and teamwork, build a shared vision, and help teams develop into high performers. They should use insights from retrospectives to drive improvement and break down silos within the organization. Additionally, agile practitioners should regularly assess the team’s understanding of agile, adjust their approach as needed, and select suitable methods for coordinating across multiple teams.
Recommended Reading from the PMI Agile Practice Guide
Before diving into the Mindset domain, review these sections from the PMI Agile Practice Guide:
2. An Introduction to Agile
3. Life Cycle Selection
Current PMI Members can download the PMI Agile Practice Guide PDF.
Tasks in the Mindset Domain
Below are short descriptions of each key task you should master for this domain (click on task name for detailed information):
Task 1: Experiment Early
Deliver early product increments to validate solutions and market needs, while encouraging innovation, learning, and growth.
Task 2: Embrace Agile Mindset
Apply agile values and principles, use complexity models to address different scenarios, and tailor agile approaches to fit the situation.
Task 3: Promote Collaborative Team Environment
Create a clear team vision and working agreements, foster high-performing teams, use retrospectives for improvement, and support effective collaboration and coordination.
Task 4: Build Transparency
Ensure that information on status, progress, risks, and learning is shared openly with everyone, and establish effective feedback and communication strategies.
Task 5: Foster Psychological Safety
Create a culture of trust where team members feel safe to share ideas and feedback, challenge the status quo, and learn from mistakes without fear of blame.
Task 6: Shorten Feedback Loops
Involve stakeholders from the start, focus on maximizing value quickly, and use techniques to accelerate feedback and learning.
Task 7: Embrace Change
Promote a growth mindset, adapt processes and priorities as needs change, and encourage learning and development of cross-functional skills.
Summary
The Mindset domain focuses on cultivating the right mindset, principles, and behaviors necessary for agile success. It emphasizes continuous learning, innovation, collaboration, transparency, psychological safety, fast feedback, and adaptability to change. Mastering these tasks ensures agile practitioners can lead teams effectively and deliver value in dynamic environments.