Agile. Let go of the cargo!

Cargo Cult. Many have heard of it, not all know what it means. Many more do it without even realising it. What is Cargo Cult and what can we do about it?

For the uninitiated, Cargo Cult would seem the name of a Hard Rock band or a Sci Fi B movie, but the expression comes from far away, all the way back late XIX to mid XX century. According to?Encyclopaedia Britannica, these were religious cults grounding their faith in recent historic events, specifically the arrival of a special “cargo” of goods from supernatural sources — based on the observation by local residents of the delivery of supplies to colonial officials. Something observed throughout World War II. Airstrips were associated with these “gods”. Once such events stopped, local tribes continued believing in the gifts coming by air, so they built big airstrips out of wood and built make-shift radio towers, thinking that those were what summoned the gifts coming in, and some of these cults became a full blown secular religions, if there is such a thing. These practices became known as“cargo cults” a name carved by anthropologists.

In the Agile universe, Cargo Cult refers to a similar effect, in which companies heard about Agile as being something that would alow them to deliver faster and better results. And because that’s their belief they start to employ Agile practices blindly without stopping to think about what Agile really is and how it all works.

But what they are really doing is just copying some practices, following sets of rules and events. They are “doing” Agile and not even trying to “be” Agile. To be able to lead an Agile way, an organization must change its mindset — and often their internal structure and processes — not only implement new meetings and “ways of working”. Also, there are several technical practices that are often neglected, usually related with testing, continuous deployment, DevOps, etc.

The main thing eluding so many organizations, big and small, is that Agile is the way, not the destination. And that comes with great responsibility.

So when you embark in your Agile journey, be aware of some perils. First, I cannot stress this enough (and I have repeated this endlessly) please, please, hire someone who is experienced on the subject matter. Regardless if you hire as an external consultant or a permanent role, find that particular professional who, after listening to your motives and your vision, gives you the honest truth about what to expect. And in that regard I can tell you that if they say anything other than it’s going to be hard, complex, sometimes very difficult, and you’ll experience a low before you go high, then that’s a big red flag.

Agile transformations take time. It doesn’t matter if you wish to transform your software development teams or your complete organization. It takes time, and effort. The bigger the scale, the bigger the effort, the longer you must wait for results. On a large scale, I usually say you need between 1,5 and 2 years. Heck, the first 6 to 12 months are usually spent staffing and training.

And if you decide to go with a consultancy company that sells you a “ready made” solution, they are probably selling you something very similar to a Cargo Cult approach. Or, if you go just with Scrum, we often call that?Zombie Scrum. The investment needed usually does not make up for the pain of having to (try) to implement something sold as a silver bullet. It all may seem wonderful and very good, but make no mistake, there are no unicorns. I say this specially in concerns with scaled agile solutions. If a consultancy company does not evaluate properly if your business model is suited for a scaled solution, you’ll probably end up investing a lot of money in something that simply does not make sense for your company.

If you wish to check if your company is somehow drowned in a Cargo Cult mentality, I would refer you to?Age of Product Cargo Cult Checklist. It’s not very long, but it is quite comprehensive and enough to cover the essential topics you need to address.

Load all the cargo (cult) stuff you have in your company and throw it away. Today.

Article first published in Medium.