Conversations about Agile Transformations in Denmark

A lot of time and money has been invested in agile transformations in Denmark. The entry point to agility in many organizations has been the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). In several organizations, the results have not lived up to expectations, which has given agile a tarnished reputation.

In the autumn of 2023, we spoke with several individuals in Danish organizations who have been responsible for or involved in transforming their organizations towards agility. We talked to them about their experiences with agile transformation. We promised them anonymity and have found that they have freely shared their experiences with us.

Thank you for that.

We have compiled the conclusions from our conversations into five main points:

• Engagement and involvement from leadership.
• Competency challenges.
• Scaling and organizational transformation.
• Connection between strategic and operational levels.
• Funding and delivery models.

We are fully aware that our interpretation of the conversations influences the conclusions. Therefore, take them as they are intended; namely, as a contribution to an ongoing dialogue about how we can better work together to create effective and value-creating organizations characterized by openness and psychological safety and the ability to act in complex and uncertain environments.

Engagement and involvement from leadership

There are significant variations in leadership engagement and involvement. In some organizations, leadership shows a strong engagement. Most experience that leadership loses interest in agility quickly and returns to old patterns of referring to employees as resources and exerting pressure and command & control management.

How to act as a leader in an agile organization is rarely addressed in the agile transformation. Middle management is often left to handle the challenge of distributing decision-making authority to agile roles themselves. They lack experience and understanding of agile and how to lead agile roles and accountabilities such as Product Owner and Scrum Master.

Top managers in the business find it difficult to embrace agility and expect to receive the same reporting with the same information and answers to questions about deadlines, project plans, and budgets as before, instead of participating in planning meetings and product reviews. Questions that are real and notoriously difficult to answer precisely – as research and experience with IT projects and development clearly show.

Finally, agility is something that happens in the IT department, and IT is still largely perceived as a cost rather than a part of the products, a part of the business strategy.

Competency challenges

There is a widespread lack of understanding of agile values and principles and challenges with the competencies of leaders and agile roles and accountabilities - Scrum Masters, Team Coaches, Agile Coaches, Release Train Engineers, Product Managers, Product Owners, and team members. Some organizations describe their Agile Coaches as theoretical and zealous, without practical experience. There is much truth in the statement that you do not become a good Agile Coach, Scrum Master, or Product Owner by taking two-day certification courses.

Therefore, we struggle to create self-managed agile teams and with the understanding that an agile team is cross-functional and responsible for planning and continuously delivering value according to a plan and creating transparency about any problems they might discover along the way.

Scaling and organizational transformation

Several organizations are involved in scaling agile methods and seek to adapt agile frameworks to their context. However, agility often remains at the operational level in IT departments. Transformations fail to create a continuous conversation and connection between the strategic and operational levels (see below).

We have a large element of hybrid models in our organizations and thus an unclear distribution of responsibilities between the roles in the old project organization and the new agile organization, between program and project managers, coordinators, team leaders, and product owners and scrum masters. We have not managed to distribute decision-making authority to the agile roles and adjust or remove the existing roles.

Finally, in very few places, we have organized ourselves according to value streams. In SAFe terms, we have often established Agile Release Trains in the traditional component-based departments or created Agile Release Trains without common products and goals.

Connection between strategic and operational levels

Agile transformation has primarily taken place in IT departments. Business involvement is minimal, exemplified by the fact that many agile teams find it difficult to involve stakeholders from the business in planning meetings and reviews.

It is also a challenge to establish a clear connection between the organization's strategic direction and the daily work at the operational level. Few organizations have managed to create a well-functioning vertical conversation - vertical feedback loops.

This creates problems with understanding how plans and work support the organization's vision and strategic direction and therefore with prioritizing plans and work. Often, this is because organizations lack a clear strategic intention. The strategy is often a mishmash of plans without a common overarching direction.

This has the effect of starting too many things at the same time without regard for cross-organizational dependencies and knowledge of and/or respect for the organization's capacity, resulting in delays in our deliveries.

Finally, there is little awareness that it is impossible to distribute decision-making authority and establish effective self-managed teams if you do not have a clear strategic intention and governance to establish them within. We see agile teams working without clear direction and connection to the rest of the organization.

Funding and delivery models

We have only succeeded in changing the way we fund our work in a few cases. Work continues to be funded as projects in annual budget cycles. The classic Project Management Office has not changed, and it has a contagious effect on the delivery model, which is largely characterized by project thinking and the resulting inability to change direction, reporting to steering groups, and the experience that frameworks like Scrum and SAFe create an overload of meetings.

More specifically in relation to Scrum, we rarely succeed in making Product Reviews work as intended, namely, to establish a feedback loop and a direct conversation between funders, developers and customers.

Conclusion

All the interviewees are still striving to become more agile. Increased agility is still the best response to the world's increasing complexity and uncertainty. They all focus on the ability to quickly assess a situation and make decisions and act and adjust direction when deemed necessary.

As the five points describe, there is still a long way to go. We still need to change many dogmas and patterns in our organizations. There are still many procedures and rules that inhibit our ability to change direction fast. There are still many competencies that need to be unlearned. Competencies that worked in the industrial society. There is a need for other competencies in the post-industrial society.

A tremendous effort has been made in many organizations, and broadly speaking, we have come a long way. Most of all, we have created awareness and transparency about our problems - our organizational constraints. The art from here is to prioritize and work with them one by one in the best collaborative spirit.

We often forget where we came from. The past tends to appear in a rosy light. It may be that we are currently disappointed that agile has not lived up to expectations, but trust us. We should not return to waterfall models.

There are many good reasons for that, as mentioned above. One of them maybe impatience paired with a a general optimism and overconfidence in out own abilities.

Unfortunately, the world is unlikely to become less uncertain and complex, and no matter how we twist and turn it, agile is still the best response we have to handling uncertainty and complexity.

Tim Pedersen and Thomas Elkj?r are partners at tryZone.