Agile is about people and value(s)

I was part of a discussion on Agile, some points which caught my attention are

• We have a well defined set of tools so delivery will happen.
• Without being Agile people cannot deliver product every month.
• Big organisations need not worry, the organisation structure will bring in transformation

We have a well defined set of tool, so delivery will happen

Let me counter by quoting the below value from the Agile manifesto

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

For me Agile methodologies are all about people irrespective of the process or tool you use. Tools only facilitate you in reaching your goal. Goal here is delivering value to the customer. Unless you transform people, you are not going to deliver value. Agile methodologies are all about discipline. Let's take an example:

A team decides to proceed with Scrum as their preferred Agile methodology. Scrum is easy to understand but difficult to master. The reasons are many but I would like to highlight few from my experience.

• Discipline: for me Scrum is all about discipline. E.g: In daily scrum, you discuss only three things (what I did yesterday, What I am going to today and are there any impediments). It is time boxed to 15 mins. You can achieve your 15 min deadline, only if you are disciplined to talk about three things. Stand-up is just an example, each ceremony in Scrum has a purpose and output. Only if the team has high level of discipline they can reap the benefit of Scrum
• Roles not well defined: Scrum talks about only three roles, Product Owner, Scrum Master and Development Team. Each role has it's own responsibilities. If the roles are not properly defined and you don't have apt people to fill those roles there is high possibility that you are not going reap the benefits of Scrum. It will be utter chaos.
• Team's not living the values of Scrum like Commitment, Courage, Focus, Openness and Respect.
• Teams not being transparent, and not doing a regular inspect and adapt.

Whatever tools we have now for Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Deployment (CD), Test Driven Development (TDD) Behavior Driven Development (BDD) etc came as a result of one or the other Agile methodologies. Unless people have a good level of discipline to follow these practices none of the tools will be useful.

In essence whatever tools or process you have, if people are not transformed you will never see any value with Agile methodologies. At the end of the day these tools are used by people.

?Without being Agile people cannot deliver product every month

This statement was specific to delivering/releasing product every month. Before even Agile came delivery use to happen, may be not on a monthly basis. For me Agile is not about delivering something every month, it is all about delivering value to the customer. With Agile, teams are forced to think whether they are delivering value to the customer at the end of every release. Agile is not only about delivering product but it is about getting feedback from these frequent deliveries. The feedback loop is very much important. If your delivery cycle is short your feedback loop will be shorter. The shorter the feedback loop the faster you can delivery value to the customer.

You are not only adding value to the customer, but you are making the life of the team easy. With faster feedback the teams can make changes easily and at lesser cost. Think about getting a feedback after three months of delivery, one line of change can open a truck load of bugs. With faster feedback the design and architecture can also be changed easily.

I have highlighted only few greatness of Agile methodologies, there are many more. In short Agile is not about product delivery based on your whims and whammies. Agile methodologies are all about delivering high value through faster delivery.

Big organisations need not worry, the organisation structure will bring in transformation

For me bigger organisation need to be more worried. Bringing in transformation in bigger organisation is like bringing down a Dinosaur. With so much of rigid hierarchy build into the system, it is very difficult to bring a change. Agile being a completely different mindset, things will become tougher. I like to compare Agile methodologies with democracy and waterfall to autocracy. Bringing in Democracy in an autocratic world is difficult. The bigger the autocratic rule the bigger the resistance will be. You will have a huge army to defeat.

Agile methodologies are supposed to bring change in organisation structure and if you depend on org structure to reap the benefit of any Agile methodology, then god can only help you. For an organisation to survive in this fast changing world, it has to be nimble and Agile. With rigid and many levels of hierarchy no organisation can survive the fast paced changes.

If people are transformed, then the organisation is transformed.