Agile transformation - what we are doing wrong, and how to fix it!

This autumn I attended a great conference with engaged agile evangelists, lean start up practitioners and design thinkers. We discussed important topics such as quick feedback loops, access to customer and the importance of a learning mindset. We all agreed on the importance to change to be able to keep up with the rapid technology development, new competition and changed customer habits. At the same time many complained about the lack of true commitment from leadership, the resistance of the mid management layer, often called the “permafrost”, and slow organisational processes, hampering any new initiatives.

I noticed that there were no senior management attending the conference, non from finance, non from legal, non from HR. Don’t get me wrong, this is not unique for this conference, it is more of a general problem. I got the same feeling when I was attending AWS huge developer conference re:Invent in Las Vegas last year, 60.000 tech geeks in one place. Often, when you go to this type of events the believers are preaching to the already converted.

 To my opinion the practitioners from the agile/lean movement makes two mistakes. Firstly, we don’t recognise that there are scenarios when more traditional frameworks such as waterfall and six sigma has its benefits. I believe it would benefit the discussion with a less dogmatic approach and adapt the frameworks to the situation. There is a tendency to apply the same formula to all companies and situation. One example is the implementation of the “Spotify model” which is a hard model to get to work properly and companies has tried and abandoned. Another example is a rigid adaption of the SAFe framework which blindly implemented doesn’t bring any agility, only processes.

 The other mistake is that we don’t adapt our language to the audience. By speaking in terms of iterations, feedback loops or user journey we miss the point. We need to adapt the language and focus more on the outcome that we want to produce by being agile/lean/design driven. Point on the benefits of early customer feedback (hint: less development cost), the benefits of deploying a product in increments (hint: earlier revenues) and so on.

We also need to reach out the stakeholders in finance, sales, legal, management etc to understand their challenges, involve them early in the process and together find a solution that works for everybody. Take the principles behind agile/lean/design thinking and come up with a new way of working together, not use the prepackaged artefacts and processes. This is the only way to truly transform all layers of the company.

 For the next conference I attend I would like to see a concept like “bring your manager” or “bring your finance guy” so we can ask them questions and understand their challenges. Involve the sceptics, the "permafrost" and critics so we can learn.