#5: Stealth Agile
Hi,
I hope this Thursday finds you well. Easter is behind us and with the weather improving I find myself becoming happier every day!
I'm frequently asked how to create agility when the organisation doesn't want to become more Agile, so I thought I would share my thinking with you this week.
One Insight I've Had
We would all be working for organisations that embraced Agile values and principles in a perfect Agile world. We would be empowered to do the most valuable work, at the most valuable time, in the most valuable way.
But old habits die hard, and there is a period of integration where the old ways of working collide with 21st?Century styles of working, and we don’t always get to use the frameworks that we would love to use. It takes time for organisations to change, and we also need to acknowledge that Agile isn’t the only solution to every problem we face. In some cases, waterfall-style project management is an excellent answer to a specific, complicated issue.
So, what do you do if you are working in a legacy style organisation but believe that Scrum or any other Agile framework would be a better solution?
What do you do when it is clear that the old waterfall-style of project management is failing teams and creating more problems than it solves??
In my experience, Stealth Agile is the answer.
Remember, Scrum is built on empiricism – the concept that we learn through evidence and inform future decisions based on what we know from data and experience – and so it forms a great foundation from which you can build your case for Agile. Designing and developing hypotheses and then building the experiments to test those hypotheses will provide you with the data and evidence to make a strong argument for resources, opportunities and more formal adoption of agile frameworks in your workplace.
Even the most cynical critic cannot argue with solid, reliable, proven data. In some cases, your greatest opponents become your greatest champions based on the evidence you present. Hence, it is worth being scientific about your process and ensuring that you are documenting everything that you are learning and measuring the metrics that matter.
领英推è
My?blog?and?YouTube channel?are filled with actionable insights and recommendations that you can use to help you deploy your first stealth agile project. If you have any specific questions that I can help you with, please reply to this newsletter with your query or connect with me on LinkedIn to run an idea past me.
If you’re curious about what Stealth Agile could be in the context of your organisation, read my article on?Stealth Agile?for some more insights.
One Quote
“Things go wrong. Often. You have to deal with them. Your value lies in delivering the most valuable outcomes, regardless of the challenges you face.
That’s the problem. Therein lies the opportunity.
If you’re a student and a need is solved. You’re happy. If you’re a 65-year old professor, deeply in love with a legacy that stretches back to the middle ages. You’re equally happy when a need is solved.
The outcome produces joy, not the methodology.â€
- Excerpt from?Stealth Agile
And A Question For You
What is preventing you from integrating agile thinking and experimentation in your department or team? If you could run an experiment that would make the case for integrating more agile ways of working in your team, what would you focus on? How willing are you to change your mind if the data and evidence support a new line of reasoning and thought?
Enterprise Agile Organization Designer
2 å¹´Thanks for sharing your insight.?Yes, Scrum being an empirical framework, collecting data and improving based on the evidence are essential. Now the question at hand is "How to create agility when the organization doesn't want to become more Agile?" I'd like to add a few more (Perhaps you've plan to include these in the future blogs): Why Change? Why do they need to change? What benefit does the change bring to their organization, their customers, and them? They need to know why and what benefits for each step of the agile journey. It doesn't stop, it continues. Who is impacted by the change? Identify who will be impacted by the change as well as the degree of impact it will have on them over time. List of stakeholders that will be impacted by the change and their concerns. Find out what's in it for them? Knowing these will help them navigate the agile journey. Communicate the changes For each stakeholder impacted by the change, show what level they are in - aware of the change, engage in the change, enable the change, commit to the change. Identify what message and what channel to share the information.
Agile Coach | Agile Trainer | Product Owner | Agile Leader
2 å¹´If the organisation doesn't want The Agile, not sure why you want to force it on them. Why not just focus on helping them identify problems to solve.