Tokyo Agile Community - April 27th Event Recap

For the first time in a while, Tokyo Agile Community has conducted its first English Speaking session. The event was held on April 27th, 2023 with the main topic of the discussion revolving around "the state and prospects of agility and Scrum in Japan". It was an hour-and-a-half-long online event, with most of the attendees being international employees working in Japanese tech companies in Japan sharing a common interest in Agile and Scrum. Gregory Fontaine, the founder of Agorax, is the speaker of the event and his aim was to improve the understanding of scrum and its use in Japan. Aside from his vast knowledge of Scrum and Agile practices, he is also recognized as the first Japanese-speaking Professional Scrum Trainer.

After a few introductions, Gregory started the talk by showing data on different industries in Japan and interactive discussions on how we attendees see the current state of Agile Development and Scrum. A lot of the feedback from the attendees showed that most of us view Japan as a late adopter of Agile and Scrum, with data then being revealed by Gregory backing up the fact that Japan lags behind the US in terms of having knowledge about Agile and adopting it in their companies.

Group discussions were then started on the problems in Japan that could be barring the complete adaptation of Agile, and how we could overcome those barriers. Among these, what stood out for me was the general concept of bureaucracy encapsulating a lot of companies and sticking to the process for fear of change.

Making changes meant taking risks, so many companies just stuck to what they knew the most. Although in newer companies such as startups, observers would generally notice that the processes in these companies aren't as strict as their more-traditional counterparts. They're more open to adapting to more modern-day technologies and being more adaptable to change.

However, as the discussion went on, it proved that there was still not that much faith among the attendees that Japan would be able to achieve higher numbers for companies adopting Agile and Scrum.

However, Gregory remains hopeful that this change is coming soon.