Have you jumped on the Agile-bandwagon yet? - And are you then the driver or the frantic person in the passenger seat?

If you have not already made agile, SCRUM, or SAFe part of your professional vocabulary, you may be among the (lucky?) few, or you may shortly be facing extinction.

Whether agile will prove to be “just another management fad” (think: TQM, MBO, BSC) or not remains to be seen, and is beyond the purpose of this article. Admittedly, agile does fit the bill on at least a couple of the characteristics of the usual suspects within management fads (https://hbr.org/2002/10/spotting-management-fads): 1) Simple, 2) Prescriptive, Falsely Encouraging, 4) One-Size-Fits-All, 5) Easy to cut-and-paste, 6) In tune with Zeitgeist, 7) Novel, not radical, and finally, 8) Legitimized by Gurus and Disciples. Agile seems to have passed the test of time – having been used extensively for at least the past 20 years within software development – and also seems to have more followers than actual Gurus.

 In our work with client companies, we find a lot of organizations, functions, projects and teams applying agile far beyond the pizza boxes in the software development offices. We find fewer who has succeeded. And a lot for whom it has caused and is causing serious headaches. So, what should you consider if you want to make agile work for you, and make the results it brings stick?

We would argue that you should at least make sure to:

1.  Be pragmatic
2. Limit Agile to Where it Works
3. Mitigate Governance Conflicts
4. Equip Your Leaders
5. Manage the Change

Our 5 Rules of Thumb on Making Agile Work

1. Be Pragmatic

Find pragmatic solutions and scale your use of Agile. Yes, we know that the true disciples will not appreciate you doing something that is not entirely kosher. The Pragmatist solutions, however, do have the added benefit that you stay reflective about whether the tools continue to perform better than other tools, and if not, provide yourself with an opportunity to change.

2. Limit Agile to where it Works

We know this may seem counterproductive and -intuitive to recommend agile and also warn against over-usage. We do, however, wish to emphasize that in our perspective, you should only apply agile methodology and methods to areas for which it is particularly well-suited. Yes, agile does have the appeal of being the next, best thing. Unfortunately, it is not. It is a great tool for specific types of challenges – not all types of current challenges. There are a lot of areas where the agile methods and thinking is NOT applicable. The science and art of agile is exactly to make sure that the agile solutions fit the challenges, and not just a blunt instrument you use to solve all of your difficult challenges.

3. Mitigate Governance conflicts

Pay special attention to the functions or areas where both agile and more traditional logics and structures are at play. Conflicts are bound to erupt among the people who “do agile” and those who do not, or within people who have to do both. The main portion of the conflicts that arise when agile is introduced is where agile needs to coexist with other logics and governance structures.

4. Equip Your Leaders

Make sure that leaders at all levels in the organization are prepared and on-boarded. The introduction of Agile has – among our clients – seriously challenged both the senior- and the middle-managers. The senior management is challenged by Agile to find new roles and new ways to add value other than being the “know-it-alls”. And middle-managers have to combat their attraction to ship the toughest and most risky decisions to the people upstairs.

5. Manage the Change

The introduction of Agile into old(er), hierarchical organization with non-digital natives does require a considerable amount of change management efforts. The role of the strategic, tactical and operational leaders changes, the strategy development and deployment change, the decision-making processes change, the internal collaboration change. And what good looks like changes, too.

 If there is one characteristic of Management Fads, where Agile does not fit the bill, it must be the 7th characteristic: Novel, but not radical. While Agile is still relatively novel (except for software development), introducing Agile to most traditional organization is definitely radical.