Explain Agile Like I’m Five

I only recently ran into a now three-year-old Reddit thread that explains Agile to a hypothetical five-year-old. And the most upvoted answer explains Agile like this:

• Only work on the most important things at any given point in time
• Break those things into small bite-sized tasks for individuals to work on autonomously

Agile delivers value in small batches

Although I don’t think the original answer is using an appropriate language for the five-year-old, it does a good job in explaining Agile and capturing the idea of its mindset.

The first point, although seemingly obvious at first, is not easy to follow. Even on our daily lives, we often times choose to work on tasks that are easier and faster to finish first. “I have this report/paper to finish today, but hey, I could just wash the dishes. It will take only 15 minutes.”

The second point helps to remove uncertainty of doing these ‘things’, especially when some of these ‘things’ are big endeavours. For example, writing a book might seem like a daunting project, but if you break it down into smaller tasks, like writing each chapter, these smaller tasks will be easier to finish. You might even get a better idea of when the book will be done. You could even go further and break down each chapter into sections or idea points. Then writing the sections of each chapter or expanding all the idea points you listed will feel even easier.

Agile as a driver for change

Although the original post stops there, I still feel there is one important part of Agile not captured by those two bullet points: adapting to change. So I’d add a third one:

• Once these small tasks are finished, ask what people think about them

With this point, we reinforce the idea that we are doing these tasks for someone else (in some cases, this someone else is ourselves), and that by getting early feedback because we broke down the big and complex tasks into smaller and simpler ones, we can make any corrections and change any wrong assumptions early and create something that these ‘someone elses’ wanted more accurately.

This is an important point that shows the break away from the Waterfall methodology. With Waterfall, you’d have to commit to your big project from the beginning and it cannot change. With Agile, you could start with one thing in mind, but end up with something else in the end. It’s ok to change your mind in the middle of a project as the often do in business.

I might consider even adding a fourth point:

• While doing your tasks, try new things, make mistakes, learn, and have fun.

So, to explain Agile to a five-year-old, I would do it this way (paraphrasing the first two from the original):

• Only work on the most important task
• If the task is too big, break it down into smaller tasks, and work on those
• Every time you finish one of these small tasks, ask what people think about them
• While doing your tasks, try new things, make mistakes, learn, and have fun.

While there is still much more to Agile, I feel these four statements drive the point across in embodying the agile mindset.