Has Agile Destroyed Itself?

With the recent US layoffs of Agile folk in the tech sector, Agile practitioners are telling me that the UK Agile marketplace is virtually stagnant.

UK recruiters are quick to admit that there is a notable decline in demand for Agile professionals (i.e. Enterprise Agile Coaches, Agile Coaches, Scrum Masters) and there is little sign of the decline slowing down, let alone a recovery.

With those latecomers still rolling off the “2-Day #Certification Mill”, waving their shiny new Agile-related certifications, it’s easy to see that the supply of “qualified” Agile professionals is still rising, outstripping the declining demand, at least for the short term.

With so much economic uncertainty in our global marketplace, is it unsurprising that cut backs are being made in the Agile space?

Well, yes and no.

MAKING CUTBACKS

When businesses feel the pinch they tend to make cutbacks.

Of course this is logical but what isn’t logical is where they make those cutbacks.

The most valuable assets for any business are its people.

Without people there is no business. Period.

Yet, reducing headcount is often the first place cutbacks are made.

The two areas that always seem to suffer cutbacks first are at both ends of the corporate sales funnel: #Marketing and #Production.

COMMON SENSE

Surely when businesses are beginning to struggle, they need to generate more business, right?

Isn’t that what Marketing teams do?

I’m always surprised to hear that Marketing teams are undervalued, even at the best of times.

When times are hard and prospects are harder to find, only the expertise of experienced Marketing professionals can find them and importantly, hook them.

Am I wrong to assume that tough times require the best marketing?

It seems like common sense, a no brainer.

AGILE PRODUCT DELIVERY

Agile Product Delivery executed well, can boost productivity by more than double.

Scrum is a lightweight agile framework. It is certainly the most popular approach to Agile delivery, so much so that the words "Agile" and "Scrum" have become synonymous in most cases.

In his book, Twice The Work In Half The Time, Jeff Sutherland, Co-creator of Scrum, explains how this can be done and why it is difficult to achieve.

This book has attracted much argument, from Agile purists and also Agile sceptics.

For the record, achieving twice the work in half the time with Scrum is relatively straightforward - ONLY IF you actually follow the rules of Scrum, not blatantly ignore them.

I speak from first-hand experience of working with many failing Scrum Teams in diverse environments.

I’m always happy to be challenged on it too!

Why? Because my Delivery With Agility Scrum Accelerator was built upon and refined by this experience.

Simply put, I was so dissatisfied with seeing Scrum Teams consistently failing to deliver, I developed a Delivery-first approach that effected prompt, successful Delivery through People-first, back-to basics behaviours.

It works!

KEEPING OUR PROMISES

With all of the hype about Agile: people-first, self-managing teams, quality-driven, fast development, high productivity, MVPs, and so much more, Agile delivery has a lot going for it.

No wonder organisations have been falling over themselves to pour huge sums of money into so-called Agile Transformation and scaling it before they’ve given forethought to nailing it.

The promises that were made in the Board Room were broken on the factory floor, or wherever the product was being built.

The expected outcomes failed to materialise.

Scrum Teams habitually played catch up, attempting to deliver old promises, several Sprints late.

“For 2 years, I’ve tried everything within my power to get my Scrum Teams to deliver and nothing has changed.”

These were the words of a CTO who called me in to help.

“My Scrum Teams won’t listen, they are delivering nothing valuable and our backlog of unfinished work is overwhelming.”

The words of a Service Owner, who was also acting #ProductOwner for those Scrum Teams.

“After 18 months of broken promises, we’ve decided to cancel the project. You are their last chance saloon, Carl”

I shall never forget those words from a Senior Director of a major High Street brand.

“I need you to come in and give an expert review of our problem”

An eComm business whose Scrum Teams were the root cause of broken promises to stakeholders.

POINTING THE FINGER OF BLAME

Agile practitioners took their eyes off the Delivery ball, pointing the finger of blame at senior management, middle management, bad management, micromanagement.

Heck, anything management!

It was inevitable that an us-and-them micro culture ensued.

Scrum Masters and management stood on opposite sides of the fence, each defending their own territory, stand-offs, difficult discussions and no win situations were commonplace.

Sadly, many so-called Agile Coaches sat on that fence, finger pointing instead of rolling up their sleeves and coaching Agile Product Delivery, in a less than perfect corporate culture.

The outdated Tayloristic, command-and-control management style was at loggerheads with modern, people-first, self-managing teams.

Let’s be clear, self-managing, in terms of Scrum, means that Developers decide WHAT to work on, WHEN they will work on it and HOW to do it.

Organisational #leadership, that financially sponsored Agile adoption within their businesses, was not going to relinquish this level of control - ever!

To be fair to the Scrum Teams, I almost always discovered that management was causing significant problems for Agilists.

But I also discovered that the so-called Agile practitioners were sitting on their hands, basking in the glory of "knowing" they were “right” and the managers were wrong.

Wrong!

This is unecessary and unacceptable.

It is certainly NOT Agile!

BUSINESS AGILITY

Business agility enables us to respond to change, even in the most challenging of times.

The fact is, businesses do not engage Agile experts simply to indulge in Agile gamification, create Agile Centres of Excellence (a topic for another day!) and sing the Scrum Guide around a camp fire.

They engage us to DELIVER the commercial outcomes they desire.

They engage us to DELIVER on our promises.

They engage us to DELIVER a return on their investment - PROFIT!

Isn’t profit what a business is all about?

Sadly, I have never heard Agile practitioners talk about being commercially engaged to make a profit. ??

A TOOL FOR DELIVERY IN TODAY'S WORLD

In a challenging market, teams that are truly Agile can outperform their competition manyfold.

Businesses that want to succeed in these times of uncertainty would do well to adopt Scrum.

Scrum’s empirical, iterative approach maximises transparency, whilst minimising risk, in short Sprints.

Scrum eliminates waste - does it?

Scrum is based upon Lean Thinking, at least the Scrum I teach is.

Is yours?

Scrum affords high levels of #businessagility that can empower a business to disrupt a market, by positioning itself to take advantage of emerging commercial opportunities first.

Perhaps the perfect tool for today’s uncertain business world but a tool that carries the baggage of years of broken promises.

In my experience. every failing Scrum team I met, was not using Scrum as defined by its co-creators in the Scrum Guide.

Those teams had adopted dysfunctional behaviours that eventually got so bad that I was called in to help them.

This was not Scrum. It was not Agile.

It was fake Scrum. Fake Agile.

The in-house Agile Practitioners and previous external Agile Consultants had turned a blind eye and allowed this #dysfunction to persist.

Has this fake Agile ultimately killed all trust in real Agile?

Has Agile destroyed itself ?

SCRUM DELIVERY ACCELERATOR

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OUTCOME DELIVERY ACCELERATOR

Delivery With Agility is an Outcome Delivery Accelerator.

It starts with cultivating a Delivery-first mindset.

A commercial reason for coming together to seek the most effective ways to deliver the valuable outcomes your customers so eagerly desire.

This establishes YOUR WHY.

Your commercial or personal rewards stem from this.

Deeply Knowing your WHY, communicating your WHY, and being seen to live your WHY, is a highly influential motivator.

Outcome delivery can be accelerated with People-first behaviours, by using Behavioural Science and Psychological Safety to nurture a culture that stimulates Delivery-first behaviours, and a sense of belonging, Community.

A Community, focused on Delivering the best outcomes, sooner and sustainably!

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