Chapter 6 - Map Agile to Culture Change

“Well,” she said, “if the leaders give their own input on where the company needs to move the needle, then what the teams, and all of us, do can and should be aligned with the leader’s goals and therefore have their support, or at least a fair expectation that they support what’s been asked of them.”

“I don’t follow,” I said, prompting an explanation.

“Part of the real power of the Competing Values Framework is guidance for what we do with Agile.”

“I’m confused. I thought we were already doing Agile. Almost every developer is on a Scrum team, and we’re doing all the Scrum meetings.”

“While that’s true that you are ‘doing Scrum’, there are actually a lot more things out there besides Scrum.”

“Are you saying switch from Scrum to something else?”

“No, although you could. Agile is an umbrella term, so there are other approaches and ways of working that are also Agile.”

She grabbed a dry-erase marker and quickly drew an umbrella with the word ‘Agile’ on it. Then she drew the word ‘Scrum’ underneath it.

She continued, “Agile is a set of values from the Agile Manifesto. It’s what you want to BE,” she emphasized as she wrote BE next to the umbrella. “But there are lots of things you could DO that align with those Agile values, such as Scrum. But there are also other approaches.” She wrote out “Extreme Programming,” “Kanban,” and “SAFe.”

I jumped in, “I heard SAFe wasn’t Agile!”

“Well, that’s a topic for another conversation. And likely a shot or two of Tennessee whiskey. I’m adding it because, despite the religious wars over SAFe, it’s still a widely used approach.”

Then she added “LeSS” and “P2A” under the umbrella, next to the other words.

I jumped again, “Wait, what are those? I’ve never even heard of them.”

“Just my point,” she said. “There are things we could do, and would consider them if only we knew about them.”

“Well, if they’re actually viable options, I’m wondering why my teams haven’t brought them up.”

“Well, where does ‘Keep up on new Agile methodologies’ fall in their list of priorities?”

She had me.

“It doesn’t,” I admitted. I let out a sigh and added, “So…?”

“So, back to CVF as guidance for Agile and more support from leadership.”

I’m glad she reminded me of the topic. I was a bit whiplashed from not realizing how much I didn’t know about Agile - this supposed silver bullet. I had written down “XP, SAFe, LeSS, P2A” as a reminder to look into them more. I already knew what Kanban was. The others, I was somewhere between “Clueless” and “Huh?”

She paused while I made notes, then continued, “For example, if everyone agrees we need to focus more on the Create values, what do we DO?” She emphasized the last word.

“Well,” I said, “we look for more innovative ideas. We could even give people a bonus if they make a suggestion for an idea that gets used.”

“Those are fine, and certainly ideas fit for the ‘WHAT’ side of things. In terms of HOW we work -? which the teams (ideally) own - we could have ideas there.”

I wasn’t quite tracking. I obviously knew the word “HOW,” but it’s like I was looking down at an empty toolbox.

She helped me out. “Why do companies do hackathons?”

“To generate…oh…I see. Ideas. And that’s definitely been a thing people have been doing since Agile came around.”

“Right,” she added, “and the same might be said for other practices that aren’t specific to Scrum.”

“Such as?”

“Such as Pair Programming, Mobbing, Guilds, Lean Coffee, the Google Sprint, and much more.”

I had heard of all of these, but hadn’t really connected the dots of “Agile Practice” to “Company Culture Direction and Goals.” It made sense.

“So,” I processed aloud, “it’s not really ‘Agile for Agile’s sake’ or ‘Checkbox Agile,’ but more about ‘Agile as a means to an end - the company’s goals.”

“Right,” she said, “and we might dive more into the goals later in terms of culture AND business goals. But for this now, we can look into how you might want to introduce this to leadership for their CVF input, and then later to the teams to generate best-fit practices for the agreed-upon goals.”

Next: Coming Soon...Chapter 7 - The Popular (But Failing) Approach

Previous: Chapter 5 - Our Company’s Competing Values