Agile Business Change Blog Thoughts on Agile Strategic Business Change and Agile Delivery

“De minimis non curat lex - the law does not concern itself with trifles.” This phrase is often used in cases where an item is so insignificant that a court declines to make a judgement; or, by me, to dismiss a colleague’s certain victory in an argument, usually with an airy wave of the hand.

It is interesting that the law has codified something that most of us struggle with throughout our working lives. We are overwhelmed with trifling objects, often urgent and simple to address and so we allow ourselves to complete them and ignore the important, higher priority items.

One lesson I took from our involvement with the Institute for Government report into Government IT was how widely applicable the Agile principles of prioritisation and incremental delivery are. Policy, process (even the law) all benefit from trying to deliver something good early, rather than something perfect late. The key is not to try and figure out which things are trifling (you’ll go mad, or end up in a permanent argument), but rather to focus on the things you know are important and deliver them.

It’s certainly something IndigoBlue applies to business change programmes when working for our customers. Do a short review and figure out the biggest issues. Prioritise them. Do some more work to put in the detail to the highest priority ones. Scope and implement the change. Then start again.

The idea is simple. Doing it is hard. But if you don’t approach the issues of your working life in an incremental way, you may just end up a trifle busy (sorry…)