The Agile Hysteria

You probably have seen it by now. When you enter a building or visiting a customer in the morning, say at around 9:00 AM, all the staff is standing around in small groups talking to each other. That’s what I call “THE AGILE HISTERYA”. I know for a fact that every major company uses AGILE in some area to get more productivity out of their company… or so they think!

So, is it really so productive and effective as everyone believes?  

First of all, you need to understand what AGILE is and where it came from. AGILE was used to make software developing more efficient. Development was slow and took a long time to get programs online to use it. Even than it had many flaws that had to be fixed. So, to speedup things they used something called “AGILE Development”.  

This type of development allowed developers to start with programming of making a working piece of code withing preferably 3 weeks and then deploy it for using. So, you started off with a small but working program and enhanced your program in chunks of 3 weeks. This cycle is called “iterations”. Issues of already deployed software could be fixed in any of the upcoming “iterations”. The issues were put on a board called “backlog” and picked up one by one in any iteration ahead.  

If you look at this you notice that this approach is much more effective, and you probably don’t leave out anything of your backlog. The real power of that is that you could even accept so called “scope creep”! This means that the sponsor of this development – the client – could have adjustments to the programming anyway he wanted it to work at that moment. Even it wasn’t agreed or planned upon up front. So, you could change the outcome of the initial development entirely to fit the customer’s needs. If you wanted that anyway.  

This last thing is very important and probably why “The AGILE Hysteria” began. Why? 

Well, here is the thing. Isn’t it the case that every time you have agreed something with your customer, at the end he wanted something different or complains that things are missing? 

And that’s when AGILE was re-invented to all areas of any business world-wide. You will find AGILE in almost any major company right now. But not for software development! But for day-to-day business, project management, data entry etc. But is this a good thing? Probably not!  

Why do I say this? Well, it is because the essence of AGILE is misused and misunderstood. It basically says:  

“Keep inventing, fix my current situation and come up with it within the next 3 weeks!” 

Now ask yourself if that is possible in all kinds of areas in day-to-day business? Can you be AGILE within operations like customer service, banking, data entry, insurance, process management….

I’m not saying that it cannot work in these areas, but the more interesting question is – “Should you use it?”  

The key thing that nobody uses is the element “effective communication”. What good is it when you stand every working day in a circle with 25 people for 40 minutes? Nobody listens, nobody has a clue of what was being said is affecting their work! Just for the sake of doing AGILE…and the coffee, of course…. and the small talk… and not being at work... whatever reason. 

AGILE wants you to only say the essence of issues that are NOT according to plan (most of the time)! And that within a maximum time of 10 minutes with a group of max 5 people. Don’t have anything to say? Skip it! In fact, I had “Stand-ups” (that is how they call the morning gatherings) that lasted less than 60 seconds!  

This is the biggest hurdle companies have to overcome. Keep it short and effective! Managers have to keep these sessions effective, and - in my experience - there are not many managers out there that can actually do that.  

Don’t misunderstand me here! I’m not saying that they are not capable, I’m saying there are no managers controlling this! Meaning that AGILE is introduced and now someone is pointed out to be the “scrum-master” (the person in charge of the stand-up).  

How is this going? Imagine the following example:  

Silly is doing data entry for 7 years now. She knows how everything works and everyone knows Silly. Now AGILE is the new way and Silly gets reorganized within a new department and is appointed to “scrum-master”. She attends some online courses and maybe has a chance to get a certificate…aaaand Silly is “scrum-master”! 

Yes! Mission accomplished! Or not? Well, NO! Is Silly ready to make the hard call? Probably not, because Silly is not a people manager. Otherwise, she was a manager long before AGILE in here data entry life. Will she be happy about her new function? Probably also not, because she never wanted to be a people person (manager) in the first place. That is why she choose to be in data entry.  

Does this scenario sound familiar to you? 

So here you have an important aspect of why AGILE is not working in other areas of your business as you like it to be. You should really investigate if AGILE can make a difference to your company on that area where you like to have AGILE controlling it.  

But most of it all how is it affecting your customer and employees in the end? Do you have the assets (employees) to be AGILE and are they agreeing to it? Have you checked with your employees how they think AGILE will affect your business or have you heard about it and now want to implement it? Do they have the capacity to be AGILE or are you hiring new personal to do the job? 

Agile is seen more and more as a business process than a tool and here is your 2nd biggest hurdle why you shouldn’t consider not using AGILE in your process. IT’s A TOOL!!! Not a process! You may integrate it as one, but it still is a tool. And there you have the chance of losing your biggest asset of your company, your human factor and your commitment of your people.  

Most company’s I have visited use AGILE as a process. You see a degrade of commitment when AGILE is introduced after a while. Sure, the charts are amazing, and you could argue that work is being done. But is it really done better or is it the first time you have more insight in the work that is being done?  

Some people are excited about the change, but due to restructuring most of the time, employees will most likely get another position in which they are very likely to be unhappy in. And so, your commitment of your employees and the commitment to your customers is vanishing. Your process may seem better even perfect at some point, but your customers won’t be happy about it, trust me!  

And now my favorite one. Projects! Yes, you do have AGILE in Projects and even working ones according to Prince2 AGILE. But here comes the company and making a whole new level of it. And it goes like this: 

“AGILE, isn’t it working with iterations? Why don’t we build projects in iterations? So, let’s say we start and then we go from there in cycles of 3 weeks. We can fix issues the next cycle. We always will deliver what the client/customer wants. No project will fail anymore! With AGILE nothing can go wrong! This will be the best project approach ever! 

Aaamm,…. NO, it won’t! Why? Because you can’t have a project with this kind of iterations, then you lose control of your planning, costs and time. You even don’t have a planning when starting like this! That’s why you work in stages and work packages in projects. Of course, you can make a project AGILE, but not in this way. Companies give a whole new meaning to projects when they hear the term AGILE. Please understand it first before acting! 

In my short journey of “The Agile Hysteria” you see just a little glimpse of how I see AGILE is being used and how it is miss practiced, misunderstood and misused to justify the means of using it. There are many, many more examples of how AGILE isn’t used as it was designed, but in short you should ask yourself the following: 

“Will AGILE make my business and my customer satisfaction better when I start using it?” 

The real question is, are looking for customer increase and more satisfied customers? Maybe also better reviews on your company by introducing AGILE? Or are you on a mission to cut costs and don’t care if customer- and employee satisfaction will drop or stop to exist? 

Anyway, implementing AGILE will not necessarily improve on the areas where you are looking at. It will most likely lead to dissatisfaction an many areas and last but not least increase your spending’s by a lot! 

I’m not saying you shouldn’t do AGILE in your company. I’m saying think about introducing it long and hard as up to now I have not found any company using AGILE right other than in software programming.  

Let me know your experience and thoughts about it.