I’m a creative guy.  

I’m a creative guy stuck in the persona of a technologist and trainer. I spent a good part of my career doing what was needed to stay afloat at the expense of doing what I love most. 

Even though I found ways to inject my passion into my training, coaching, and leadership practice, it wasn’t until I started the Badass Agile podcast in 2017 that I understood how to effectively merge passions – creating a life that motivates and inspires me. 

But a few decades into the merry manifesto, there is no question that Agile has gone stale. I’ve lamented in public that there’s very little original thinking in the discussion or the implementation. In a church that promised no magic bullets, no frameworks, and no processes, we worship devoutly at the altar of scripts and sameness, as salvation sneaks out the side exit. 

Dead As Can Be

In common practice, Agile is dead as dead can be. The horizon is a gently fading sunset, desaturated with the golden splendour and dangerous heat of the midday. What remains is a shell – mere traces of our radiant potential. 

And this is all good news because it creates space for a re-imagined dawning. There is a wide open, green field for right-minded practitioners to not only evolve the practice but to invent it anew. 

In 2022, there is no shortage of problems to solve. Challenges threaten us well outside the software and technology domain. We are a people deeply divided. Dangerously frightened and outwardly angry. Our world of work has changed. The past two years have been anything but certain and safe, so our practices can no longer tend toward certainty and safety.  

A New Horizon

We designed The Agile Horizon to do two things. First, as a place for real ideation. We need intellectual and expressive freedom to courageously advance the craft of effectiveness in our work. Let’s consider how to lead better, and how to deliver better. Let’s iterate on the iteration. Let’s look back on what we have learned in the past 20 years and make something better.

At the same time, we want to create a space that celebrates creativity. More than just celebrate – we want to elevate it. Creativity and profitability – the artist and the business – are not magnetic opposites. My experience is that creativity is the soul of prosperity. Instead of exploring this connection, our teachers and practitioners have let it languish into the murky standing water of “the way we’ve always done things.”  

Our Goal

The Agile Horizon will be an experience for you, the reader, and an experience for those of us who want to collaborate, push each other, and create a sacred and exciting community of creators. We will not judge our ideas on their coherence with the accepted norm, but with the freshness of their presentation. Combining traditional ideas into fresh structures and concepts, we will have fun. We will lift each other up. We will play. Our highest ideal is to push each other. We’ll learn to be fearless and aggressive. In the process, we’ll do something that has never been done before. This will serve as a model of what is possible when we care enough and dare enough to see it clearly and pursue it heroically. 

For you, the reader, we hope you find something that inspires and elevates you here. For those who may contribute, we welcome you to a new and different world of innovation.  

A hopeful sunrise.