Agile unleashed – What lies beyond Scrum?

Lessons in extreme agility from Tesla and SpaceX

During the last 20 years many companies have switched from their traditional Waterfall Project Management to modern methods that have increased their agility considerably. However, there are still plenty of challenges that put the brakes on fast development and innovation. Things that still make us go at snail-pace are for example:

• fixed price contracts
• complex decision-making structures
• internal and external regulations
• mandatory checks and quality gates

Much focus has been put on the implementation of agile frameworks such as Scrum, SAFe, LeSS and “Spotify”. We’ve followed trainings, we’ve done our exams and we have all tried our best to apply these learnings in our organizations, hard as that turned out to be sometimes.

But sometimes a curious manager asks: What is next? What comes after “Agile”?

Agility is crucially important these days. If you cannot innovate fast, if you cannot respond to changes fast, you might be lost.

The short answer is: In the future we won’t say “We are agile as an organization”, but a-la-Descartes we will say “we just are”. Agility will be an intrinsic quality and there will be no need to brag about it.

Extreme agility

A peek into the future of organizations is given by Elon Musk and how he organizes Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink and The Boring Company. Sit tight for this message:

These is no Scrum in Tesla, no SAFe, no Less (but still, less is more!). There are no fixed teams, there are no product owners. They don’t do sprint planning. They don’t have sprint backlogs. There are no meetings and no presentations. And they have achieved extreme agility. Agile to the max. And don’t forget that these are basically hardware companies. How do you build a Falcon Heavy rocket iteratively?

To make it even more jaw dropping: They can make 27 hard- and software changes per day on a Tesla Model X in production. (That was in 2021. Now it’s probably even more).

The key to all this is that your teams and employees have to be as autonomous as possible. They should be able to take all the decisions themselves, even about purchasing, vendor selection and hiring.

This is achieved by what is called their “Digital Self-Management (DSM)” system. Each employee gets 28 apps on his or her phone that show live KPI’s about costs, benefits, objectives, issues, bottlenecks, test results, quality, vendor performance etc. As an employee, you come in the factory in the morning, check your apps, see where the bottlenecks are, and YOU decide where you can be helpful that day, where you can add value. And then engineers work as mobs together. They are expected to work on problems that they might not be familiar with yet, either in production or in new initiatives.

Another area that is extremely important is fast feedback loops. They invest heavily in test automation and the more that can be automated the better. Hardware, robots, software, interfaces, KPI’s, DSM (Digital Self Management) apps, engineers are continuously updating the automated tests. Inspection of paint on vehicles is automated. Complying with regulations is automated. Test driving is automated, as cars basically test themselves.

"Ka-Chow, I’m ok!" (from the movie "Cars")

One more thing that increases flexibility is modularity. Everything is modular, with clear interfaces. This makes is easy for the team that works on for example the head lights of a Tesla to make changes to this item, without having to deal with dependencies with other teams or with approval procedures. They don’t need to organize meetings to agree with other teams and they don’t need complex, expensive planning sessions. They just decide because they believe it would make the vehicle better.

Tesla’s digital self-management system stands at the center of their way of working but working with well-defined KPI’s is not something new. The concept of the Obeya room has risen in popularity in the agile community. An Obeya is a “large room” where all individuals involved in planning, execution and decision-making meet to speed up the development process. All KPI’s, plans and important metrics are exposed on large walls in the room, to facilitate discussions and decisions. Everyone can walk in and contribute. After COVID the virtual Obeya made its entrance and people work together from a distance with the same information.

Move the information in order to empower

But now comes the part where Elon’s companies really change the game: The use of AI to create valuable, up to date, actionable output from all the data that are continuously collected from everywhere in the company: IT systems, camera’s, robots, teams, factory floor, distribution centers, providers etc. If for example, a customer did not accept the car she or he just bought, a red alert will appear on everyone’s phone, with a description of the complaint. People will work as mobs together to solve the problem as quickly as possible, with insights in costs and benefits.

If you want to practice extreme agility and if you really want to change fast, you give people the power of information. In the words of David Marquet[1]: “Move the authority to where the information is” or in in this case, move the information in order to empower.

Maybe it is as simple as that: Define metrics and create a system that pulls information continuously from your workflows. The sources of information can be of many types, such as automated tests, camera inspection, sales, procurement, and team work etc. The information should be accurate and present the current situation. Build an AI system that analyzes this data broth and turn it into useful actionable information that can be cast to screens and apps.

Imagine for example that your AI can summarize the current complaints that are coming in at a customer care center, analyze the possible causes, provide possible solutions and cast that to employees on their phone, so they can take immediate action on it. No waiting for a manager to decide, no project planning and no budget approval.

Of course, it is not as simple as that. The challenge will be to convince management that this is the worthwhile trying, letting go of the yearly budget cycle and invest heavily in an AI self-management system. If we then embark on this path, we might see glimpses of extreme agility.

And that is how Agile is unleashed.

Credits to Joe Justice for his amazing knowledge sharing through courses, videos, pod casts, conferences and more. Joe has helped introducing Agile in more than 20 countries around the world. He has taught Scrum at Tesla, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Boeing, Toyota, NEC, KDDI, and other companies. His passion for mechanical engineering led him to found the automotive company Wikispeed in the US.

[1] Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders Hardcover – May 16, 2013 by L. David Marquet (Author)