Disciplined Agility: A Framework for a Fast and Precise Enterprise

The desire of Business to perform better, faster, and cheaper has made the term "Agile" a buzzword. It is usually associated with frameworks and methodologies that improve the performance of software development teams, like Scrum or SAFe, and Disciplined Agile, highlighting how a small difference in words (Agile vs agility) makes a big conceptual difference. Sometimes these frameworks are misguidedly used in business functions that are unrelated to software development, or they are erroneously considered a silver bullet by technical teams with a change-averse culture.

Agility is not a result of Agile framework implementations; it is the result of skills developed by individuals and teams, which must blend behaviors related to agility and discipline at the same time. The constant, repetitious nature of developing agility requires discipline, as can be observed in world-class athletes endlessly practicing and adapting to feedback to improve speed, endurance, precision, timing, or any other applicable metric of agility. Combining both skills, then, leads to a concept that can be adopted and implemented in just about any business function: Disciplined Agility.

The Foundation: Individual Behaviors

Disciplined Agility begins with personal development to cultivate behavioral skills related to agility:

1. Adaptability: The cornerstone of personal agility is accepting change and practicing openness to new experiences. Do you feel upset when events you can’t control change your plans, or do you embrace the opportunity to spend your time experiencing something else?

2. Creativity and Innovation: Novel solutions arise from creativity and innovative approaches that respond to challenges. Are you a pioneer, early adopter, mainstream, or laggard when it comes to new solutions? Is your feeling different at work and at home?

3. Clarity: Good communication skills facilitate collaboration and clear expression of thoughts, needs, and concerns. Clear actions follow clear thinking. In your mind, do you have a clear picture of how to get something done? If you don’t, others will be confused, too…

4. Emotional Resilience: Bouncing back from setbacks and managing stress is akin to “checking the ego at the door”. It reduces contention, promotes collaboration, and embraces diversity. How do you act when you feel embarrassed? Do you light-heartedly laugh about it with others, or do you hide it and hope no one finds out?

5. Confidence: Developing skills kick-starts a virtuous cycle that increases confidence, and confidence promotes quickness and precision in choices and actions. More skills lead to more confidence, and the extra confidence leads to exploring new limits, which develop additional skill. An Olympic weightlifter spends years breaking personal records before reaching world-records.

6. Flexibility and Adaptation: Not feeling the need ‘to be right’, and not feeling compelled to continue with ‘this is how it’s done’, allows formulation of effective responses when dynamics change. When a new competitor enters your space, do you simply rely on what’s worked before, or do you check what needs to change so you can win?

7. Learning Orientation: Actively seeking opportunities for learning and growth fosters more knowledge that can be converted into new skills. As P. Drucker famously said; “If you think training is expensive, try ignorance.”

8. Stress Management: Effective stress management is a life changing experience. It centers actions in best behavior and helps to avoid the turmoil of stressed-out decisions, conversations, and actions. Do you remember situations you regret? Did you feel stressed out when you did it?

These behaviors of agility can be developed and improved over time, with focus, dedication, at times hard work, and by accepting observation and feedback; in other words, discipline itself can be developed as a spectrum of behaviors:

The Pillars: Personal Discipline

1. Accountability: Taking responsibility for actions and decisions takes emotional maturity and ethical conduct. If you damage someone’s car in a parking lot, do you leave a note so the owner can reach you, or do you hit and run??

2. Self-Management and Self-Motivation: Strong self-management skills, including time management and goal-setting, are fundamental to any program that develops skill. Discipline relies on inner drive and inspiration, especially when external motivation is lacking. Do you study for the test, or do you cheat?

3. Strong Principles: Upholding principles and values, especially in challenging circumstances, is a show of disciplinary strength. As Blake Sheldon’s song asks, “Who are you when I’m not looking?”

4. Commitment and Consistency: Dedication and ‘staying the course’ is a hallmark of personal discipline. Maintaining consistent actions and behaviors is crucial for the fulfillment of commitments. Continuous improvement is how Disciplined Agility is achieved. As the German saying goes, “übung macht den Meister" (practice makes the master).

5. Delayed Gratification and Focus: Prioritizing long-term goals over short-term desires is a testament to discipline, and allows one to appropriately say “no” to behaviors, including work and tasks, that are counterproductive. Maintaining focus on one task at a time improves quality, productivity, and therefore the outcome. The skill to resist temptations and distractions is part of concentration. Juggle one ball, then juggle four and compare the experience.?

6. Routine and Habit Formation: It’s only ‘discipline’ until it becomes a habit. Thus, stick with it until the awkward laborious task becomes routine and then eventually a virtuous habit. This is one of the most powerful tools for anyone’s pursuit of long-term gains through constant incremental improvements.?

7. Pace: A sustainable pace that avoids burnout is necessary in ever-improving performance. A marathon requires a different pace than a sprint.

Since most of us work with others, individually developed Disciplined Agility is the foundation for a team’s version of Disciplined Agility.?

Team: Collective Disciplined Agility

In a team, defined not as a “group of people working together” but rather as a “group of people that trusts each other”, Disciplined Agility extends to collective behaviors, which teams are reluctant to give up after they've experienced the benefits:

1. Accountability (discipline): Teams hold each other accountable for shared goals and commitments, celebrate successes together, and rally to overcome challenges together.

2. Clear Goals and Priorities (agility): Clear goals and priorities align the team with a common purpose and allow quick decisions and actions. This is the team’s equivalent of an individual’s clear thinking (see above) delivered as a collective.?

3. Readiness (discipline): Initiate work when ready, rather than too soon or too late, so optimal outcomes are assured. This is the team’s equivalent of the 1-ball versus 4-ball juggle discussed above.?

4. Reflection (discipline): Regular reflection on performance and how to enhance it with small adjustments contributes to continuous improvement. As Marilyn vos Savant suggests, “To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.”

5. Quality and Standards (discipline): If quality is treated as an absolute measure, and issues are urgently addressed, then the commitment to excellence becomes obvious in the outcome. Consider the adage, “eventually, no one remembers if it was late but everyone still remembers if it didn’t work”.

6. Delivery of Incremental Value (agility): Breaking work into small, usable increments that can be delivered quickly to make meaningful progress, allows the team to avoid overpromising, and is usually celebrated by the team’s customer as, “they get things done”.?

7. Knowledge Sharing (agility): Freely spreading knowledge and expertise strengthens the team's collective abilities and skills. Among your trusted team members, don’t be the kid that jealousy guards their test answers from prying eyes.?

8. Root Cause Focus (discipline): Investigating the root cause of a problem or issue may be laborious or tedious, but it does ensure that issues don't recur. When you don’t fix the root cause, eventually you end up in the familiar cycle described by Albert Einstein: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”?

9. Openness and Transparency (agility): A team of trusting people necessarily is open and transparent with each other. However, allowing stakeholders, customers, and other knowledgeable and competent outsiders access to work as it is being done has many potential benefits, as well: small course corrections are suggested before big problems arise, the team’s trust is promoted to outsiders, collaboration is fostered, and culturally incompatible detractors become obvious.?

Disciplined Agility is born from individual mastery that is collectively codified in team behavior. It serves as the foundation for a new framework that can be used to achieve two separate goals: enterprise agility, and behavioral fine-tuning of Agile software development frameworks. Behaviors can be assessed, measured and developed, and then scaled to an ever-increasing number of individuals and teams, and ultimately throughout an entire organization. Disciplined Agility paves the way for a culture of high quality at high speed at just the right time.

You might be thinking, “Sounds great, but how do we do it?” More on that in my next article…