Growing your Agile initiatives

When thinking about this issue of Effective Agility I thought to write something about what makes agile transformation fail or what makes it frustrating for teams and organizations alike, then I decided to go into the positive side and discuss how to succeed an agile initiative, how to grow it healthy and fruitfully for your clients and people to reap the benefits for agility and avoid possible frustrations.

I will focus on five points in this article while knowing there are others to consider as well.

1 - Consider agility an initiative not a transformation

Yes, consider agile adoption an initiative, something small, specific, where you just need to explore, experiment and take decisions accordingly. It is not a software ready to download, it doesn't operate by getting some inputs and giving you some outputs that will magically solve all your problems. Even software don't deliver instant solutions and require a journey of implementation, training and maintenance.

It is not a silver bullet for success, it is not a training or a system that will transform your company and the reality around it. It is a torch that will give you greater visibility and awareness as well as the tools to make the changes you need at the pace that is suitable for you.

Agile is a personal journey for leaders, associates and your overall company, a journey you walk together with your people at your own pace.

I consider agility in an organization not like a blue print that will fix everything but a small plant that if planted in the right soil and watered properly will give beautiful flowers and delicious fruits.

2 - Make sure your goal is clear and conform with the agile values and principles.

There is an important question to ask ourselves as leaders and company owners: Why?

Why do we want to consider agile, why do we want to use scrum or Kanban or SAFe or Scrum@Scale....

If the answer is something that goes with the agile values like becoming more creative, solving complex problems, increase clients satisfaction, improve product's quality, build what the clients needs.... Than we are on the right path and agility will hopefully give u what we expect

We need go into our agile journey's for the right reasons so we won't be deceived and most importantly we won't deceive our people and create frustration.

Remember our small plant? lets make it clear why we are planting it, what we expect to see when it grows, because you can be sure, it will need care to grow, so you'd better be clear on the why, why you are planting it and why you will put the needed efforts and investments to grow it.

3 - New initiatives need safety

Imagine your small plant, trying to grow strong, what would happen if it doesn't get the needed attention? proper watering? protection from wind or over exposure to sunlight?

It is the same for your agile initiatives, if there is no proper attention from qualified people, proper involvement from collaborative associates and mindful protection from fixed mindsets and destructive criticism how would it grow strong?

Psychological safety is not just a hype, it is not a statement that we start we start using few years ago, psychological safety is the fertile soil that can make any initiative grow, it not essential for only for agile, it is mandatory for any organization that wants to learn and grow, it is mandatory for any organization that seeks creativity and innovation, it is mandatory for any change initiative you want to take both on personal and organizational level.

4 - Select your scaling framework wisely.

After you are clear about your goal, and you are comfortable considering agile as an initiative and you have experimented with few teams and saw the benefits of being more agile, you might decide to scale your agile initiative to more teams or to the overall organization.

I have seen a lot of teams and organizations that saw a lot of benefit when applying agility at teams level but when scaling frustration start to occur and unhappiness smell strongly in the atmosphere.

And it is not only about happiness it is also about deliverables, one or two scrum teams where delivering high quality products but when scaling we start getting problems, delays and conflicts.

What happens?

Scaling by itself is critical, scaling agile teams is even more critical, nowadays you have plenty of scaling frameworks on the market, some are more adopted than others, some are more popular, some claim to be more agile and some claim to be more successful.

Choosing how you want to scale agile is as important as your decision to go agile. Most of the frustration happens for teams and organizations when scaling agility.

Make sure to have the right partner, not a partner who sells you a scaling framework but a partner who allows you to select the best scaling approach and who is able to implement it with you.

The choice of your scaling framework says a lot about your current company's culture and the culture you are looking to build. It says a lot about how you aim to work and which work environment you want.

5 - Consultants and Coaches

And here we reach the consultants and coaches that accompany your journey, they can be internal or external.

These people are have key roles in agile transformations, they need to have the knowledge and skills needed to guide the transformation and guide your efforts and your teams efforts in the right direction.

Yet they are not the owners of the transformation and they are not going to do the work on your behalf.

They are here to make you avoid potential pitfalls and guide your team efforts in the right direction. they are here to give you the needed information and allows you to make unbiased decisions.

Agile Coaches and Consultants can't be sellers of a given framework and don't need to charge you enormous fees. They need to have proper knowledge and experience and the right mindset to serve the agile journey, tell you the truth, transfer knowledge and enable your people to take the lead on that journey as soon as possible.

In conclusion, to succeed your agile initiatives follow these steps:

• Check if it is needed and start small initiatives, learn and grow
• Have a clear goal, know your why
• Set a safe atmosphere to nurture and grow agility
• if you decide to scale do it wisely
• And select the right agile coaches and consultants who will be your partners in success.

Growing Agility in your organization requires multiple factors, like a plant needs good soil, water, sun and a suitable environment, agility requires a vision, a safe environment, an agile mindset and proper care to grow.