Agile Mindset In Construction

"There Must Be an Easy Way"

It was in 2013 when I was managing a project consisting of 96 residential units. Part of my job was to visit each unit to assess progress and guide my team on the next steps. This wasn’t easy—especially considering the heat and the fact that each unit was at a different stage of construction. It was during one of those exhausting rounds that I thought to myself, "There must be an easy way."

Have you ever wondered when this phrase was first coined? Imagine a situation where someone, struggling with a complex task, says, "There must be an easy way." That phrase, in essence, is the seed of the agile mindset. When we're faced with a challenge that seems overly complicated or time-consuming, it's only natural to think, "There must be an easier way."

Let me share a story.

Imagine a coder in the mid-1990s working on a large software project. After three days of non-stop coding, they submit their work for a quality check—only for the tester to find an error on the second line. Frustrated, the coder must have thought, "What a waste!" Three days of effort, gone. That’s when the realization should strike: "There must be an easy way."

What happened next changed everything. The coder and tester decided to sit together. As the coder wrote each line, the tester checked it in real-time. This practice later became known as Pair Programming, a cornerstone of the Extreme Programming (XP) agile framework.

If you trace the origins of agile, you’ll find that it all starts with this simple idea: "There must be an easy way." While some critics dismiss agile as just an excuse for disorganization, I believe the agile mindset is vital for human progress.

Think of a child trying to climb a sofa for the first time. They may pause, look around, and think, "There must be an easy way." Perhaps they’ll use a stool or cushion to help them up. That mindset of seeking ease and improvement—that is agile. It may take time, but that’s what agile is all about: making work simpler and more efficient.

Now, back to my story of the 96 villas.

In 2013, I was appointed as an Assistant Project Manager for a residential development with 96 identical villas. The project was already underway when I joined—and I can honestly say it was a mess. I bet every single villa was at a different stage of construction. It wasn’t one cohesive project; it was 96 mini-projects.

My room on-site was special to me. It was the first time I had my own office on a project site, and it happened to be a room from one of the villas. One of my key responsibilities was to inspect site progress and suggest next steps. But imagine—it wasn’t one site I was visiting; it was 96 mini-sites.

So I began working on a way to reduce the burden of these site visits. (Yes, you guessed it: 96 sites!) I created a massive chart on the wall of my room. On the x-axis, I listed all the construction activities. On the y-axis, I listed all 96 villas. Using different colours, I marked completed activities for each villa. It took me almost a month to complete the mapping.

During that time, I was laughed at and mocked. People said things like: "Mr. Saud, how do you expect to manage a project by coloring on a wall? If you want progress, go stand at the site and supervise!"

But I stayed patient and kept going. For that entire month, anyone who came looking for me was told, "Mr. Saud is in his office doing some coloring!"

Anyway…

Once the chart was complete, I began holding progress meetings in my office, using the chart to show the status of each villa. Then I asked my team members to update the chart themselves by coloring the completed activities. That’s when the magic began—magic I had never anticipated.

Initially, my goal was just to simplify my work. But what happened next was beyond expectations. The coloring became a motivator. Supervisors were eager to highlight completed tasks on the chart. I saw measurable progress between each review meeting. Eventually, the dynamic flipped: instead of me assigning tasks, supervisors were coming to me, excited to share what they had completed—just so they could mark it on the chart.

That was the first time in my life I experienced agile thinking—even though I didn't know the word "Agile" back then. I was simply trying to make my life easier on the project. And in its truest sense, the word "Agile" means easy to move.

Yes, that’s the story of how I was agile without even knowing what agile was. It was the mindset—the urge to simplify work and improve the process—that led me to build that chart. Later, when I formally learned about agile methodologies and practices, it blew my mind. I realized that I had already been practicing many of them intuitively—and I believe many of you are too.

Think about it: villas on one axis, activities on the other, and each time work was completed, it was updated visibly. Teams were assigned specific activities—just like Scrum teams—and villas were passed from one team to another like a user story flowing through a Kanban board.

They say everyone contributes to quality. And in this case, work completed by Team A was handed to Team B, which checked the quality before continuing and passing it to Team C.

We can use the concept of information radiators, just like I did on that project. These are visual tools that display up-to-date project information for everyone to see. When the execution team sees project progress displayed openly, it becomes part of their thinking. They start to own the project—and what more could a project manager hope for than a team that actively thinks about progress and invents ways to achieve it?

That’s agile.

That’s the mindset.

That’s the magic.

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