Agile transformation; where should your energies be focused in the early days?

More than once I’ve observed teams focusing on the wrong things during the early days of their agile transformation. Perhaps I shouldn’t use the word ‘wrong’, because they were indeed aspects that the organisation needed to address, but they turned out to not be the right focus at that time; meaning that energies focused elsewhere might have produced a bigger positive impact.

I’ll start with one example. As with many transformations this team started with the basic learning of agile principles and practices – where a wide range of topics were covered; far too many concepts for any individual to retain in their working memory. So it was the ongoing coaching that set the overall direction and focus for the coming months; and that focus was on ensuring the basic ceremonies and artefacts were being conducted well – which is not unusual.

However, the specific circumstances this organisation faced were that its squads were regularly hampered by poor tools & systems, architectures and processes meaning frequent systemic blockers and dependencies stemmed the flow of work and value delivery was poor. So, despite doing many of the ceremonies well, they weren’t able to deliver value early, seek feedback and iterate often; i.e. they weren’t agile.

The more experienced agile practitioners amongst you may ask; ‘well why didn’t this show up during retrospectives? And why weren’t they addresses?’ And those would be sensible questions. And the answer is that they did arise, but the coach and team weren’t armed with the right knowledge and tools to assess the situation and progress in the right direction.

Why did this happen? Mainly it was due to the limited experience and somewhat fixed mindset of the coach resulting in a one size fits all / cookie-cutter approach. More specifically, if the coach had a stronger background in Lean principles and practices then that person would have focused less on refining the main ceremonies and artefacts and looked, instead, at tackling the systemic issues the squad faced. Therefore being able to drive the right sort of change – and importantly, at a much earlier point in time.

In some case, where teams are plagued by systemic blockers and dependencies, you may delay any introduction of specific agile ceremonies and artefacts, opting to focus on employing Lean.

The point being, that there was a lack of initial assessment to determine what areas were problematic (prior to the transformation and during), and therefore no tailored approach was taken.

What opened my eyes and prompted this article? I met a coach that was steeply versed in Lean systems thinking. He was able to identify the fact that this area was grossly hindered by systemic blockers and dependencies and that this should be the immediate priority – essentially producing the most bang for your buck (which, as you may have noted, aligns with one key agile principle around prioritising the highest value work).

Sometimes ineffective coaching stems from ignorance (as in this case), i.e. when your coach / consultant has a narrow perspective and a narrow set of tools; like the saying goes; ‘when all you have is a hammer…’

But other times it comes from a fixed (i.e. limited and dogmatic) perspective through an adherence to one specific methodology or framework – which isn’t always the same thing as ignorance and is more problematic.

And note, I’ve seen this occur multiple times.

We could, of course, extend this beyond Lean to almost anything that is deemed to be a major issue that should be immediately addresses (e.g. cultural roadblocks such as Psychological Safety).

This is, of course, why we now see Agile principles and practices often accompanied by a whole range of other disciplines; in addition to Lean, there’s HCD / Design Thinking, Management 3.0, Growth Mindset, etc.

The point; have an open mind and learn about the wide pantheon of ideas in the agile sphere and beyond, and then be sure to assess a situation before you decide how to tackle it and where the place your energies. This will make you a much more effective coach / consultant.