To become Agile...

For a few weeks now, I've been absent. I had Covid (I was among the 1% who up to this point had not been infected). I was also on a vacation. and spent a week conducting training in a business setting. With lessons, coffee, and sickness, I had a full schedule. However, I also read and studied a lot. Along with books and papers, there are also numerous professional and "professional" discussions on twitter and linkedin.

I frequently teach Agile 101 or Agile and Scrum workshops in my lectures, and I generally begin by providing a heuristic overview of how Agile evolved to be what it is now. I then focus on some of the important trends and frameworks, such Scrum, Kanban, Design Thinking, and OKRs. All excellent and significant in their own right.

However, what I am discovering and beginning to do more and more is to spread the idea that if we think of Agile as a mindset or culture (as I believe we all should), then there is really no need for Agile to exist within ourselves and our organisations in the form of a specific framework, tool, or technique.

I am aware that businesses require structure, procedures, and other things. All that is understandable. And so, for the most part, we frequently deploy a framework or certain practises to get things started with a small team or department in the hopes that as results start to become apparent, Agile may spread throughout the firm. That is the bottom-up strategy. And it could work to some extent.

But if our leadership is not acquainted with the Agile values and mindset, there will always be a significant obstacle. When we give our staff autonomy and empowerment, middle management and C-Levels typically don't appreciate change... they even tend to repel it as if it is the plague.

In conclusion, it doesn't really matter how you launch a pilot in your business or how many training sessions you plan with your teams; if you don't train/coach upper levels, which includes all leadership levels, it won't truly work. The organisation may even have a few Agile bubbles (typically in IT or engineering), but overall it will still be a vertical dinosaur from the early 20th century.

Article originally posted in Medium.