A common complaint I hear these days is that “Agile does not work” or “Agile is all hype.” This frustration with Agile methodologies stems from two sources:
Despite adopting Agile methodologies, the organization continues to build the wrong things. My response is that Agile’s prime focus is not to help organizations build the right things but to help organizations build things in the right way. Being Agile in IT doesn’t prevent the organization from making poor strategic choices. To resolve that, there are other frameworks that one should use, such as Mobius Loop.
Despite adopting the processes of one of the Agile frameworks (usually SCRUM or Kanban), the organizations continue to under-deliver. The development teams continue to work hard, but the actual throughput of working code into production is low, and there is unhappiness and a disconnect between the business and development teams about what is being delivered, why it is being delivered, and how it is being delivered.
I want to address the second issue. The second issue often stems from the fact that the organization does not understand that adopting Agile methodologies is not about just implementing the processes of an Agile framework but it is about developing an Agile culture within the organization, where one of the key goals is to empower the team that is delivering the solution. Many organizations feel that they are “Agile” because they have implemented the rituals of one of the frameworks without understanding why they are doing it. They take those rituals and implement them to align with existing management practices.
So, for example, if they adopt SCRUM, they may implement daily stand-ups. The stand-ups are meant to be a mechanism for the members of the team to hold each other accountable and to identify roadblocks that can be addressed by the scrum master(someone with no authority). In addition to accountability, it builds transparency and trust, leading to greater empowerment within the team as they don’t want to let each other down. However, in many organizations, the stand-up is used as a daily status meeting run by a project manager, where each team member only provides status updates to the manager and not to each other. The result is that each participant reverts to providing “rosy” updates about how everything is going well and then stops listening as the next person provides an update. There is no connection between the team members, and the project manager suddenly becomes singularly responsible for ensuring that everyone is on track, which eventually leads to them having too much control over the entire delivery.
Therefore, the underlying dynamics of how the team functions have not changed. The organization has chosen to do this either because:
They don’t understand the underlying goal of the process OR
They are unwilling to relinquish the power and place their trust in the teams that are delivering the project. Therefore, there is no Executive buy-in for being a truly Agile organization.
Therefore, the results remain unchanged because the organizations are NOT Agile despite implementing all the ceremonies involving an Agile Framework. So next time you complain about “Agile not working,” you must ask yourself whether you are true “Agile.”
The best way to know if you are truly Agile is to ensure that the entire organization (including the executives) has understood and bought into both the Agile Manifesto and the 12 Agile Principles. Organizations should not even discuss frameworks until they have fully understood these two things and accepted the consequences of being an Agile organization. One way to recognize that they understand is by fully trusting the team to deliver the solution without micromanaging them. Too much of the early discussion involves implementing a framework, and organizations need to understand that frameworks are a guide to help you as you begin your journey. Ideally, the hope is that your organization will evolve so much that they move away from rigidly following the prescribed processes in these frameworks, using them simply as a foundation, and you will adapt them for your specific organization while still retaining the spirit behind those practices and the underlying principles of an Agile culture.
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