All aspects of the agile mindset are underpinned by a quantitative understanding of our work, of our progress and of the value it will provide. We use data to understand the problems we are facing into and to prioritise the sequence in which we resolve those problems.

Culture in the organisation is central to the teams’ ability to sustain and grow its agile mindset. Everyone in the organisation shares the responsibility for improving and sustaining the culture. Leadership plays a critical role by embodying the behaviours that shape the culture.

When we don’t know how to solve a problem, or when we are faced with situations where we don’t know how to progress, we use experimentation to rapidly make progress. Even if our hypotheses turn out to be wrong, we can use that knowledge to decide how to proceed to the next step.

We validate our work and our ways of working by seeking frequent feedback from customers, leaders, and other stakeholders. We respond rapidly and transparently to requests for feedback from others. Frequent feedback gives many opportunities to adjust requirements, priorities, and ways of working to better need stakeholder needs.

High performance is the expected norm for all teams. High performance is encouraged by a culture that emphasises the importance of Mastery, Autonomy and Purpose for everyone in the organisation. High performance is manifested through the rigour and discipline of teams and individuals and through the imperative to improve continuously.

Managers are appointed. Leaders emerge. Leadership is an emergent attribute of ourselves and of the people we work with. Leaders begin to emerge as they acquire, display and share mastery over their assigned roles. The circle of leadership starts small - within a team or other peer group. As depth of mastery and the ability to share it effectively increases opportunities arise to expand the circle of leadership more widely. Leaders choose when they expand their circle of leadership.

We take advantage of every opportunity to learn from events and from experience. We learn as teams and as individuals. A key part of the resilience of the agile mindset is how we react to the failures that we will inevitably experience as we work on complex, adaptive problems. Our resilient response is to treat a failure as an opportunity to learn. We seek the causes of failure and to learn how to avoid those causes in the future.

Whenever we attempt something new we should start with the simplest realistic approach that we can find. As we find gaps in our approach we can add more complex features to close the gaps. This principle relates to our belief in a Simple Response.