Agile

Have I told you that I love Agile? Oh, for the hundredth time already?
Well, it’s true! I do love Agile. I truly wish everybody would adapt Agile into their companies, teams and lives (yes, really).
But not everyone gets the results they were promised.


After seeing a few of these types of transformations, I’ve observed three common elements that I believe contribute to lackluster results: approach, culture and leadership. These are three vital ingredients that can make or break your transition to Agile, but they’re often – tragically – overlooked.
In this post, you’ll learn what you can do to keep all three elements front-of-mind.

Now before I go on, I’m aware that not every situation calls for an Agile transformation. In the past, I’ve made the mistake of seeing only nails to my agile-hammer! In this post I assume that the organisation, team, or individual has gone through the critical analysis process and discovered that Agile could work for them. If this is a process that you haven’t thought about, need help with, or think is not worth doing – check out this video.

Approach
Lots of people think that there is only one approach to Agile. One approach to Scrum, one approach to Lean, one approach to any Agile methodology.
Here’s the meta-problem: that mindset is, in itself, not agile!
Some people find comfort and security in following procedures by the book. But the thing about agile is that it allows you to learn. No, it encourages you to learn.
Agile is about the evolution of the process: it teaches you how to manage change so that your agile will never be the same as anyone else’s agile, let alone “by the book”. There is no strict procedure, no single method, and no single right way. You can’t simply copy your friend’s amazing transition – it will almost certainly fail. Every organization will learn differently.
If you keep worrying about how to stick to a single approach, you and your team are not going to grow. Growth, my friends, is what it is all about.
On the flip side, having no set rules can feel liberating…to the point where anything goes. This approach is also flawed and often results in a team going back to the way things were.
The right approach is finding the balance to manage change while also promoting team/organisational growth within a loose set of agile principles (let’s call these, The Agile Manifesto!)

Culture
You’ve all heard that culture eats strategy for breakfast I can tell you that culture will also devour your Agile transformation.
If you’ve been using traditional development models for quite a while and you’re running a big organisation, be warned: it’s going to be a very slow and difficult transition.
Culture is extremely tough to transform. Agile is disruptive, and I love that it is disruptive because it really breaks an organisation. It shines light on things that demand fixing and it teaches people how to be comfortable with that.
Agile also encourages improved interactions and collaboration, which won’t be easy for some hardcore traditionalists to adjust to.
It’s a long and painful process to transform a company’s work culture and many times, you will be faced with resistance. If your organisation’s culture is not open to accepting the change in values that Agile brings, do yourself a favour and go back one step. Look at your culture and what you can do to evolve it to one that will allow for open, honest, and difficult conversations to be had without the worry of politics, ego or penalties. look at your culture and what you can do to evolve that to one that will allow for open, honest, and difficult conversations to be had without the worry of politics, ego, or penalties.

Leadership
It should be no surprise that without competent leadership, any Agile transformation will fail. Actually, any complex initiative will fail. A friend and natural leader recently wrote:

Typically leadership teams lock themselves away in an offsite location and develops strategy [until it is] crystal clear to them so they expect their people to understand it just as they do. Everything should be sweet, right!?
– Rash Khan (link here)

I am well aware how cliché this is, but communication is the key to change. Any leader who fails at inspirational, high-bandwidth, emotionally-intelligent communication will render themselves ineffective very quickly.
Technical prowess and IQ do not help if you cannot communicate effectively as a leader. Effective leaders are those who are able to fly through huge, scary, disruptive changes. And we all know that leaders who make it through those kinds of changes, always practice effective communication.

For years, I thought the concept of leadership was too ‘woo-woo’ and honestly a waste of time. Boy was I wrong…and it only took me meeting one true leader to realise the world I had been blind to because of my closed-mindedness.
So when a consultant (much like me!) tells you how amazing Agile is – please give yourself the self-respect of hearing that as “how amazing Agile can be”. I’ve only outlined three of my observations here, but there are many more reasons why Agile transitions fail to realise their true benefits. Having said that, most do tend to fall under these three general categories.

If you want to know more about those, let me know in the comments or by email, and I’ll be happy to share more challenges that face people attempting an Agile transition.

If you are wondering how to be Agile (and not just do Agile) and don’t know where to start, talk to us!
Better yet, explore these three questions before you get in touch:

  1. How many of my colleagues (as a percentage of your team/organisation) are as excited as I am about an Agile Transformation?
  2. Do I (or someone else) have the ability to communicate in a way that will influence but still be informative and up-beat?
  3. How many times have you heard the phrase “because that’s how we do it/we’ve always done it” in the last 12 months?

 

Please feel free to share your findings and thoughts with us!

1 Comment

  1. As a Team Coach is driving individual teams towards empowerment and Agility, an organization will need to start optimizing beyond the team level, looking at how the products and structures within which the teams operate, interact. When organizations reach this point, the need for a System Coach arises.

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