The Simple Power of the Agile Canvas

The Agile Canvas is a simple, scalable way to organize any kind of collaboration. It can engage a few or few hundred in strategic, project and everyday work planning.

The real magic of the process is that it’s question based. This empowers us to move quickly from uncertainty to clarity and action. The essential difference between thriving and struggling groups is the quality of questions they work from. The process engages the group’s available talents and resources, making weaknesses and deficiencies irrelevant. It requires no special leadership, training or technologies.

The Canvas is organized by 4 unique conversations that keep us continuously focused, realistic, aligned and responsive to learning and change.

In the Dreaming conversation, we define progress and success. We describe what we would love to see possible and frame each as a question because questions have 3–5 times more power than statements. We timestamp each question with estimated and adjustable beginning and achievement dates.

In the Clarity conversation, we determine what we will need to research and decide in order to address our highest priority Dream questions. These include our unknowns, assumptions and concerns. We frame each as a question and timestamp each.

In the Gifts conversation, we map out the talents and resources we have available for achieving our Dream questions and answering our Clarity questions. This makes it more possible to engage these as we go about our organizing questions.

In the Doing conversation, we do whatever needs to be done every two weeks to engage our gifts in answering our Clarity questions and achieving our Dream questions. These gives us a steady cadence of traction, progress and success.

Because of the way the process organizes everything that emerges and results, everyone stays continuously engaged. People show up, share and support each other with integrity, inclusion and initiative. The process works as well with groups working together for the first time and experienced groups. The Canvas promise that the right things will always get done at the right time.