The Anti-fr(agile) Manifesto. Mutatis Mutandis...

(This is the Second article in a trilogy. You can find the first Here, which talks about Agile transformation failures. In the current article I attempt to get the root cause of this. The third article will suggest a new roadmap for Enterprise Agility)

The thing that irks me about the Agile Manifesto is... er... before going into that, I must first say that The Manifesto is good. Damn good especially for software development. Well, can you think of many other things that came out in 2001 and has survived till date in its original form? I think this did because it is very simple, succinct yet profound. But alas... does not feel consistent! A minor thing perhaps, and you may blame my OCD… but it feels inconsistent in one little aspect!

Consistency. Self-referential integrity. Please!

While the Seventeen signatories had very ostensibly converged on the crucial need for software teams to focus on ‘valuable product’ to achieve agility, they seem to have forgotten to mention (I believe, with certain good intentions) the ‘value/vision’ of the Manifesto itself. Consequently, leaving to interpretation the word Agile – it may be a framework, a process, a philosophy, a scripture... Whatever it is; the thing that’s the outcome of living by the manifesto and attendant principles.

So, Agile has come to mean many things to people, consultants and organizations – speed, responsiveness, adaptability, stability, evolutionary, light weight, economical, resilience, robustness, or sometimes anarchy! The term has come to be overloaded and they don’t all mean the same. Similar perhaps. Sometimes not even that. We could have non-lightweight pachyderms which are evolutionarily competent in some ecosystems. Resilient cockroaches are far from light-weight in the process sense (The DNA of a cockroach is one of the most complex with long genes that can manage thousands of use cases for - smell, taste, toxicity). And then, there could be a hyper responsive organism that quickly dominates an environment, using up resources rapidly or turning cancerous.

A rose is a rose is a rose (Except when it’s an adjective, noun and a verb!)

One may have a valid point in that the open-ended manifesto serves a purpose that allows all the flavours of Agility to come forth to solve different problems. So, if all these interpretations lead to a better result, is there still an issue? Yes. for two popular reasons. And a third, less popular one that is my main intent behind this post -

First reason. Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets (a brilliant adage apocryphally attributed to Edwards Deming). If we design with the Manifesto's principles we get exactly what it promises - the magical 'valuable' product. But what is this value? Value to who? If we are designing a transformation for an organization that is facing hell every financial period, is it a good idea to aim for a self-organizing, adaptive organization? Would a quicker, part-Lean transformation build the moat for future focus on grander ideals? Defining Purpose becomes crucial to ensure fitness for purpose.

If there was a clarity on the value that Agility brings, perhaps this gap can be bridged. And perhaps the 40-odd percent success rate that Agility claimed (more like a contentious report by Standish Group claimed) could have been more. The most painful failures in transformations for Agility have come from forcing the concept without understanding the real need of the hour. And no philosophy or tool, even the swiss-army knife, is so universal that it can be used everywhere.

Second, even if by some fortunate twist the outcomes end up desirable, working with wrong expectations often lead to unsustainable change. I know of an organization, a very large, very profitable, historically successful organization that started out implementing Agility because they wanted their IT and business Ops working together and sustain competitive advantage in the market. And Agility helped in this over the next two years, improving performance and response in the functions where it was implemented. By a strange co-incidence, in the next two years their profits soared even more, in product areas that had not gone Agile yet! What do you think happened to the momentum, priority and funding given to Agility? (Hint: 'Success to the successful' systems archetype)

Is Agility needed, really?

This brings me to my final peeve. Even though there is ambiguity around the Manifesto’s outcome, as time went by, Agility has generally come to mean ‘responsiveness to change’. So, is all well? I don’t think so. There is a problem with this as well. How does one respond to change effectively if, like the great Ali - the lithe, responsive bee and butterfly who once dominated the boxing ring, one faces terrible decline in mental faculty in later years? So, I contend that it is not enough to be (responsive) Agile in order to achieve adaptive, long-term, sustainability. And I believe these three things together is a very valid goal for organizations setting out on the path to Agility. Call it something else perhaps - Sustainagility? Meta-agility? HYFi (100 year fitness)? SALTY (Sustainable, Agile, Long Term-y)? - if we don't want to further overload the term.

As to the appropriateness or universality of this value, that is perhaps a much longer debate. For now, it is perhaps good enough to start on the premise that most of the Fortune 100 organizations would give anything to survive successfully for the 100 years - especially the next 100. And, if that is so (obvious as that sounds, I hope some PhD researches this) then this goal is a worthy ‘end value’ for a manifesto, is it not? Even if this isn't a universal goal, but your organization believes in it, the ideas below should help.

What does this kind of Agility entail?

To achieve adaptive, sustainability in the long-term, we can take cue from the world of biology and evolution for the most successful examples (and perhaps avoid the "everything was created in six days and then the Gods vanish" approach that some organizations seem to take). I think this will lead us to three capabilities. I will discuss them briefly here as this surely requires more space. A longer write-up (third of the trilogy) will follow -

A. Purposefulness - Design for purpose and Build capability, culture (The Gene & inheritance)

B. Flow - Achieve optimal operation to meet purpose (Survival. Epigenetic and Memetic evolution)

C. Variation - Build in random variation and resilience to achieve anti-fragility and learn from failures (Mutation and long-term survival)

'Purposefulness’ requires goal-directedness, and responsiveness to feedback. This is necessary to be 'fit for purpose'. Start with right purpose and choose skill and structure to go with it. Design thinking and Organization design are some tools that help.

‘Flow’ This is essentially about how to 'thrive in the present'. Flow, as in resource optimized, continuously delivering and learning organization. The Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s metaphor extended to organizations perhaps. The body of work on Lean, Edwards Deming's TQM, Complex Systems thinking, Learning organizations, Agile manifesto, Lean startup are very useful to achieve this.

‘Variation’ requires variation, positive-risk budgeting & anti-fragility! Random variation. This is the reason we don’t have a Dodo any more. It did not have occasion to mutate and vary randomly. To be challenged and forced to change. Be prepared for unexpected, black swan events. This is the crux of 'long term evolutionary fitness'

Please mind the Gap

I think it should now appear that the original Agile Manifesto will fall short on some areas to achieve this goal -

Flow is very well covered. Ideas from Lean startup and other learning based frameworks can give it a fuller shape.

Purposefulness too has been addressed albeit, I contend, in less detail. The iterative part is well covered. I think the design thinking and goal-directedness can use more focus. This is no new idea. Many of the signatories themselves have admitted the need for better iterative (Continuous) delivery and design thinking. Thoughts and technologies that were not available and prevalent in 2001.

The last part, Anti-fragility, is a very old idea in the science of organisms. Yet, not mainstream in the science of organizations. To survive for a very long time, it is insufficient to learn based on available data alone, or basis feedback. One needs to prepare for unprecedented, unlikely and extreme events by forcing variation. One needs to experiment for random resilience, anti-fragility and preparedness. One needs a broader understanding of risk and resourcing by evaluating for ROI (RAROC) based on these risks.

Now, this Agility looks more complete to me. I can go with a clearer conscience and tell organizations to aim for this, and they will surely thrive better - for a much longer time!

Metamorphose. Mutate

To sum up, my peeve is that having overloaded the term Agile, and seen the crazy reverberations, can we take a pause. Try to reframe and perhaps re-term Agility to what is relevant, needed and possible for the current times. And even if we can’t review the Agile manifesto, I really wish we could just add the “Value” for the manifesto itself. 

Or perhaps just rewrite a new manifesto. Iterate. Verify. Adapt. Or just randomly mutate.