Siddharth Chhottray
2 min readAug 23, 2021

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Can Our Choices Be Agile?

Should we fail fast in personal life?

Since time immemorial, our parents, teachers and well wishers have buttressed the ideology of “Winning Always”. Despite differences in perception of success, the kernel has forever been the same – “Never Fail”. However, a different school of thought has emerged in recent years.

One of the tenets of Agile Methodology is to fail fast. In other words, this encourages us to explore multiple solutions & approaches at the same time. It is okay to not succeed sometimes, especially if the cycle of failure and pursuit of an alternative solution, is complemented by speed. “Failing Fast” is the new mantra!

Image Credits: VegaShark

This principle is very important and relevant to a customer-centric solution design, where one often goes through iterations and experiments, before reaching at the most optimal solution. Therefore, it is necessary to develop the ability of proposing several solutions, testing them to gather customer reactions and preferences, discarding the unsuccessful ideas, and embracing the popular ones. Pursuit of multiple ideas at the same time can increase the probability of finding the right solution, as compared to trying them out, one at a time!

The bigger question for us is whether we are ready to embrace this thought and propagate the same to our personal and professional lives. For example, should one stick to a pre defined career path and pursue the same for decades? Or should one try out different job roles and make quick decisions on which one seems to be the best fit? Should one always commit to their first relationship? Or should one be able to gauge their relationship quickly and decide whether it is pragmatic in the long run? Only time will tell if we choose to make our lives more agile!

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Siddharth Chhottray

Agile enthusiast with overall experience of 10 years in Project & Program Management, Delivery of Products & Solutions, and Consulting