An Agile 2 Assessment Can Help You Navigate In a VUCA World

Managers are usually surprised at the results of an Agile 2 survey. It reveals that issues that they had not been thinking about are linked to issues that they have been thinking about—like retention, DevOps skills. It also reveals why their Agile or SAFe processes have not reduced their feature time to market below three months.

Issues that they had not been thinking about are linked to issues that they have been thinking about—like retention, DevOps skills

What Is an Agile 2 Assessment?

The Agile 2 assessment survey is based on Agile 2, so it is not some home-grown idea of “agile maturity”. Agile 2 is informed by leadership theory, cognitive science, behavioral theory, and operations research. The survey questions were developed with the help of Human Synergistics—experts in statistical assessment. The survey is done online and takes about 30 minutes to complete.

Why You Need It

The standard way that Agile consultancies assess agility is to perform an “Agile maturity assessment”. Such an assessment has several flaws:

1. It is based on someone’s idea of the “practices” that will make someone “agile”.
2. The criteria for what is actually “agile” is based on the Agile Manifesto and someone’s idea of what “Agile” means—not based on actual theory or empirical research, and not grounded in organizational psychology or operations research.

Organizational agility actually consists of several components:

1. Financial agility: the duration of existing commitments (suppliers, debts, leases).

2. Market agility:?

• Sensing when the market has changed.
• Availability of adjacent markets so that one can pivot on one’s offerings when market conditions change.

3. Operational agility: making changes to one’s business processes and systems in order to support changes in strategy. This is impacted strongly by:

• How people lead.
• How people organize.
• How people collaborate.
• How people create.
• How people get work done.

Items 1 and 2 are out of scope of this report.

Agile 2 is about item 3. Operational agility is crucial for you to be able to rapidly change your product to meet changing customer expectations such as when a competitor introduces a new feature, connect your systems to new suppliers to match changing global conditions, and react quickly to leverage new technologies. An Agile 2 assessment can tell you how Agile you actually are, and why—or why not.

Agile 2 is not someone’s idea of what “Agile” means: it is based on actual theory and empirical research, and grounded in organizational psychology and operations research.

How It Works

To perform the survey, the organization provides a sample of the portion of the organization that is of interest. For example, we recently conducted an assessment of the engineering group of a multi-billion dollar product company. The group contains about a thousand people, and our sample size was 35. It spanned all levels and across many job functions. About 40% of those surveyed were Agile coaches, since that was a cohort of particular interest.

Results

The results were eye-opening. Analysis of the data revealed wide consensus on these perceived realities:

1. Participants do not have sufficient access to data, for testing and for business intelligence.
2. The agile coach role, as practiced within the company, is not very effective.
3. Teams do not feel that they have capacity to address unforeseen issues.
4. Participants do not feel that teams are adequately recognized and rewarded for performance improvement.

These are huge. Number 1 is very tangible, and might be easy to fix, but we would need to learn more. In fact, all four of these are warning signs that need to be looked into. None of them is a fire to be put out: all are leading indicators of deep problems. Ignoring them will almost surely carry a huge cost.

Looking at number 2, the Agile coach role is a key leadership role. It is not a role that carries authority, but leadership is influence, and Agile coaches are paid a lot and it seems that not much is coming from that role. What to do about this is to be determined, but number 1 is a red flag.

Number 3 is one contributor to a lack of business agility: In product development, things almost never go to plan. Agility is the ability to quickly change direction. But if issues come up and teams are not able to respond, there is no agility.

Number 4 tells us that people feel unappreciated. Goodbye retention!

Some of the detailed results can be seen in figures 2 and 3 at the end of this article.

Cause and Effect

The results enable us to conjecture about some cause-and-effect relationships. For example, item number 3 in figure 1 will likely (following the red line from (3)) hinder the ability of teams to react quickly when changes in direction are needed, which in turn impede frequent experimentation in the form of market-testing new product features.

Figure 1: Constructive AgilityTM cause-and-effect map

It is important to note that these are not conclusions: at this point we only have indications: red flags so to speak. To truly understand what is happening and why requires talking to people in the affected parts of the organization and creating a clearer picture of cause and effect. An Agile 2 assessment is merely one diagnostic starting point.

Now What?

An Agile 2 survey can be used in two ways:

A. To identify if there are problems lurking.

B. As a diagnostic in the course of a larger analysis of the source of issues that are already known about.

If A is the case, then our methodology prescribes several additional steps, including,

1. Clarify the current strategies, objectives, desired business model, and perceived challenges.
2. Identify OKRs for success.
3. Do additional assessments and key interviews, depending on the nature of the problems uncovered so far.
4. …

If B is the case, then the survey is probably being conducted in the course of doing assessments and key interviews.

Either way, the next step is to drill into these issues to learn specific examples and try to identify root causes. That will differ from one organization to another. The point of this article is to illustrate how an Agile 2 survey can be used to reveal lurking problems that you should not ignore. Agility is not just about programming: it is about the health of your organization.

If you would like to learn more about our process, please set up a time when we can explain it using the calendar tool here,

https://koalendar.com/e/meet-with-an-agile-2-academy-consultant

or submit a request for more information through our contact form,

https://www.agile2academy.com/contact-us

Figure 2: Results are rolled up along various dimensions. This dimension is by behavioral category.

Figure 3: The detailed results are provided so that you can drill into each question.

Why Agile 2 Is Important

Agile 2 is not a framework. It is a set of powerful ideas that are grounded in science and contemporary research. The ideas are based on widely accepted models of leadership, what neuropsychology tells us about how to balance focus and collaboration, what behavioral theory tells us about how to work together, and what a validated organizational culture theory tells us about culture. And the Flow and Risk Management content derives from Operations Research, as well as thought systems such as Lean and Theory of Constraints.

Agile 2 is about real agility—not pretend going-through-the-motions agility. It is about results and what actually works—at scale.

More Info

Agile self-assessment web page - see how agile your organization actually is.

Agile 2 assessment info page - learn more about getting an Agile 2 assessment.

Agile 2 training - teaches:

• Leadership theory, based on widely accepted models of leadership.
• Effective collaboration techniques, based on neuropsychology and behavioral theory
• Organizational culture theory, based on the Human Synergistics culture model.
• Flow and real time risk management, based on Operations Research, Lean, and Theory of Constraints.